


The Gift

by iniquiticity



Category: Hockey RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: CW: Concussions, Gen, Hockey Gods, San Jose Sharks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-07 23:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 33,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iniquiticity/pseuds/iniquiticity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I was playing pond hockey,” he says, which, in retrospect, probably wasn’t the best thing to say after you’ve been smashed against the boards hard enough to be rendered unconscious. [NOW COMPLETE]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Conceptually, I love the "hockey gods." This is a fic about them and Joe Thornton, who I also love, both realistically AND conceptually (despite giving him a concussion in the first chapter). This doesn't follow a real season and isn't proper canon, I guess, though I (mostly) made the most appropriate guesses how this series of days might happen. Not always, because it's fiction and I do what I want. Additionally, there are lots of places where I just made stuff up because I have no idea how they do concussion tests or schedule junk. 
> 
> Of course, I do not own nor represent Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, Dan Boyle & the rest of the San Jose Sharks organization and staff. I am merely borrowing their likenesses for a bit. There are no connections or affiliations between these fictional stories and the people or organizations mentioned. None of these things events have happened and any similarities in events to real life is purely coincidental; this is a work of FICTION and no profit is being made on it.
> 
> If you a) found this by googling yourself and are not ready for a little weirdness or b) desire to read slash fiction, then please hit the back button now.

Joe likes playing in Boston. 

It’s a more complicated sentence than it appears at first glance, and when he sees the TD Bank Garden on the schedule, he gets excited and dreads it all at once. He’s a pretty seasoned veteran at this point, and the regular season rarely thrills him on it’s own - he has to wait for the win streaks to occur, for him to get hot, for the fans to yell and scream for his adrenaline to start pumping. This isn’t to say he doesn’t play hard and doesn’t want to win, of course - but hockey is bred into him like a gene, and he loves it like an addict, and playing sometimes is more to keep him regular than to get him high. 

Some of the places are better than others, of course: Vancouver, crazy Canadians and their thoroughly irritating team; LA or Anaheim, and all the fans and their rivalries; Detroit, and all the history that’s there. The Eastern Conference teams always inject a thrill into things, going somewhere new, meeting unfamiliar opponents. And Boston - Boston is where he was made into the player he is now, and where they told him, in so many words, that Patrice Bergeron was a better captain than him, that Patrice Bergeron played harder, that Patrice Bergeron was the type to build the team around, not him. _He_ had been made captain too early. _He_ had had his character questioned.

(After that, what JR had said about Patty, over and over again - his A had had to talk him down from plastering his ex-teammate’s guts against the studio background.)

Him and Bergeron are friends but it’s taken a while to be that way. And him and the Bruins - they’re not friends. And he doesn’t forget those comments either, and he would lie if he hadn’t been more furious than ever to watch the Boston team that questioned him get the Cup before him. So he has to beat them, has to win, has to show them what they more or less gave away. He has to be more Jumbo than ever, and teach those few San Jose fans that always show up in Boston why they’ve picked right. They cheer for him, and the Bruins fans sometimes give him a few obligatory cheers without even understanding why he left, which entertains him a little. 

He’s competitive. He doesn’t like to be viewed as ‘someone to trade as an asset.’ He hasn’t found anyone in hockey who appreciates this kind of view, and he suspects they would not have long in the sport anyway.

So, Joe likes playing in Boston. 

What he doesn’t like is looking up at Zdeno Chara. They don’t call him Jumbo for no reason - he’s not used to looking up at other players. (He recalls Scotty Nichol giving him a lot of crap on this, explaining in clear terms _he_ has never had to dodge a flailing elbow or a shoulder to his head). He relishes the competition of playing against him, and being lined up against deadly-fast Seguin and vicious-hard Krejci. But Chara is a different monster altogether, one of the few in the league that can use the body against him, and does so with a mean streak that goes well with his Slovak scowl. Chara hits hard and his checks are punishing. Joe isn’t afraid - he’s never afraid when it comes to hockey - but on the scale of things he likes in hockey, being checked by Zdeno Chara is way, way down there. 

So when they go to Boston, he thinks about it. 

He stops off at Pat’s to say hello and get a drink and talk about ‘the good ol’ days,’ and how everyone is doing. And then he plays hockey. 

He’s battling for the puck in the corner with Milan Lucic and Jaromir Jagr when Chara hits him. This is not a regular hit. This is him, head-down and fighting for the puck, concentrating on keeping it in his sights between the whacking sticks and slipping skates, and every inch of Chara crashes into him. He’s never been hit like this before, never had this much weight pummel him into the solid boards, defenseless. 

Chara’s shoulder catches his cheekbone, and he feels the force of his head hitting the boards, and his ears ring. Something short-circuits and the ice is coming up to his eye-level at a shocking pace, and there’s the shrill call of a whistle and the sounds of pushing and shoving somewhere close. 

It’s strange, having no thoughts, the world going black the way his kid’s room does when he turns off the light.

* 

It’s bright when he wakes up, and his head doesn’t hurt. He sits up, still dazed. 

Someone is watching him from close-by. 

Also, he’s outside. 

Also, his team is gone. 

He lays back down on the ice and puts the palms of his gloves in his eyes. When he opens them, it’s cold and sunny still, not a cloud in the sky, a little breeze coming from nowhere. 

He’s on a pond. There’s pond hockey nearby. 

“Patty?” He says, and he sits up again, wiggling out of his gloves and pinching himself. Still outside. “Coach?” 

“Hey, you’re awake,” says the man watching him, and he skates closer. Joe studies him for a while and tries to figure out if he knows the guy. There’s a crawling sense on the back of his neck that he does - that he’s known this person for a long time, too. That they’ve grown up together, that this is an old friend. But he doesn’t recognize the man’s face, aside from the passing feeling the man looks like someone he knows. 

The guy is wearing a Habs uniform from a long time ago and no helmet. He has about four days growth of stubble and an easy kind of hockey smile, missing teeth and cheerful.   “Come on, play with us,” the man says, tilting his head. “The game can wait.” 

“I have a game to play,” he says, and he stands up. Nothing hurts, really. He feels pretty good, aside from the obvious absurdity of suddenly going the TD Bank Garden to pond hockey somewhere. He definitely has a concussion, he thinks. “Not yours. Sorry. But I was in Boston, and... where are we?” 

“The game can wait,” the man says. He tilts his head back towards the game in question and taps his stick gently against Joe’s ankles. He has an old-fashioned-looking wooden stick, too. Joe can’t shake the feeling he knows this guy, and even moreso that the guy knows him. “Come on, play with us.” 

“I really have to get back to Boston. Look, I don’t know how I got here, but--” 

The man grins wide at him, gaptoothed. His friends at the game have started to shout at them. He laughs and shakes his head, drawing one glove over his stubble. 

Joe suddenly thinks that this is some kind of insane kidnapping scheme where he’s been taken to play hockey with people and if not, they’ll kill him. This is only slightly less absurd then hitting your head in Boston and waking up in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a pond hockey game. He thinks he might actually be unconscious on the ice right now, maybe being wheeled out on a stretcher. Anywhere but Boston, he thinks with an internal kind of groan. 

He doesn’t even know where he is, and there’s no sign of civilization on the landscape. He doesn’t have his phone or anything. So what else can he do? 

“Ok,” he says, finally, and he picks up his stick and puts on his gloves and skates over. 

The game is weird. Aside from the whole ‘likely in the middle unconscious hallucination’ part, it’s a really great, really fun, really fast game. Not a lot of turnovers. Not a lot of bad dumps or shitty passes or badly-handled pucks by anyone. The goalies (one of which is wearing the old-school goalie mask, like a slasher flick, and old-fashioned pads) don’t get turned around or twisted up, and they’re flat-out really good. 

It’s one of the best games Joe has ever played, which is strange because he doesn’t know anyone he’s playing with. But they read him well and he somehow understands how they play, knows where to drop the puck, where they might be. He doesn’t even know for how long he plays with the guys, who wear jerseys he’s never seen before, some of old teams that don’t exist, some of the old styles, some he recognizes. They don’t have names on the back. 

Additionally, he knows when the game ends. They don’t have shot-clocks or official penalty boxes (one guy on each team seems to end up with all the penalties, and there’s enough fierce checking that makes Joe work hard) but everyone just seems to settle at the same time, him included. It’s a strange kind of sense, tickling in the back of his head, like knowing where Patty is on a scoring rush. He has good hockey sense, he’s always known, he’s always been told. This quirks him in the same way.

Several of the guys - mostly forwards - meet in a group near him. 

“So, what do you think?” One says to another. 

“He’s no Gretzky,” another replies, looking doubtful. “Or Lemieux. Bobby Orr.” 

Joe opens his mouth to retort, before he realizes the implication is these guys, more or less all that seem his age despite their old-fashioned jerseys and equipment, played with a hockey legend who retired before he put a toe on the ice as a professional. It stuns him into silence for enough time for more opinions to be added. 

“He’s very good, though. Great passes.” 

“Definitely got the touch with the puck. Good skater for his size, too.” 

“Tough enough.” 

“Besides,” one says to the one skeptical player in the group, “You didn’t help Lemieux and he did fine. Maybe his back wouldn’t have been falling out all the time if you were in. He could have been better.” 

They talk like Joe isn’t even here, and he clears his throat. 

They all look at him at once, like they've all got one mind. It's more than a little disconcerting. 

“He’s at least worth a good, solid streak," one says. "Especially considering he managed to get here to begin with." 

They all seem to murmur assent at this. Then, one of the guys - someone else, but still with that sense with Jumbo knows him (they all give him that sense, and it makes his skin crawl a little) - skates over to where he’s standing. “You should probably go home.” 

For obvious reasons, Joe laughs. “I’m pretty sure I’m passed out in the back of an ambulance right now,” he replies. 

The guy who originally came over to him skates over. Joe isn’t sure how he heard, but the man obviously did. “Time to wake up and have a points streak,” he says, and he taps Joe’s shinguards with his wooden stick once before he pokes him in the center of his forehead with the index finger of his glove. 

Joe gasps and goes cold and sharp all over, like skates on ice. 

* 

He opens his eyes and blurred beige is hovering over him, along with a collection of black, teal and gray. He blinks slowly, breathing hard, trying to concentrate. 

“Joe?” Patty - it’s definitely Patty, definitely Patty’s voice, and when he looks up, definitely Patty’s face. 

“Jumbo?” And that’s McLellan, and his face is there. 

“I was playing pond hockey,” he says, which, in retrospect, probably wasn’t the best thing to say after you’ve been smashed against the boards hard enough to be rendered unconscious. 

Patty and Coach look at each other, and someone snorts with laughter despite their best efforts.

He sits up slowly, staring at them. He’s back in Boston. There’s the low sound of the crowd and the fluoresce of the lights. He’s not in the hospital. 

“How long was I out?” He asks, which looks more appropriate, based on the reactions of the men standing above him. 

“Ten seconds?” McLellan guesses. “Not that long. Long enough. Let’s get you into the locker room.” 

Joe stands slowly, feeling the smooth ice under him. It’s not like that pond, all rough with abuse. The crowd cheers politely. He skates, slowly, off the ice and to the dressing room. The air is still. The sun is somewhere past the roof. There are no mysterious should-know players here in old-fashioned equipment. 

“What did you mean ‘You were playing pond hockey?’” the trainer asks him. This must be the quiet room, because the lights are set dim, and there’s none of the Boston memorabilia on the walls. 

“Nothing,” he replies. 

“Don’t shit me, Joe. You said ‘I was playing pond hockey.’ Chara put his shoulder in your face. This is serious.” 

Joe shakes his head and wiggles off his gloves, putting the palms of his hands in his closed eyes. His head is more or less suddenly pounding, and his face hurts. It’s like one of those things that it wasn’t hurting until he noticed - until he realized what had happened to him. 

“I think I just need some quiet,” he says. He puts his head in his hands and tries to make sense of things. 

“I’ll be back in ten,” the trainer says, and he leaves. 

When Joe closes his eyes he sees that too-familiar stranger face with the hockey smile and the old Habs jersey. When he takes a breath it tastes like crisp winter air. 

If he loses his mind over that hit, Chara is gonna have hell to pay, height notwithstanding.


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> " You shouldn't be able to walk after a hit like that. And your face isn't even bruised, and your concussion tests are totally normal. It's like it never happened."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief list of things I know: The name of the head athletic trainer of the Sharks is Ray. 
> 
> Longer list of things I dont know: how IMPACT tests work, how flight itineraries look, how visting teams in arenas are planned.

The trainer comes back a little while later. Joe's head is still hurting, but less than he figured it would. He's probably had a concussion at some point in his life, but none that he can remember - none that he would look back at the clips on NHL.com and wonder how it must have felt. While he knows objectively what happened - the trainer told him - he finds that he doesn't know what that must have felt like, what Chara's shoulderpad in his face did to him. It's a little frightening, to be honest. 

He can't imagine being Crosby, right now, going through this more than once. He clenches his eyes shut and resolves to never be caught with his head down. He feels a cold breeze in his hair like being outside and curses the big Boston defenseman as many times as he can under his breath. 

"So," Ray says, sitting across from him. Joe tries not to feel like he's being interrogated and tries to stop wishing he was just back on the ice already. "You were playing pond hockey." 

"I guess, when he hit me…" he starts, because at this point, he might as well just come out and say it. "I hallucinated, or something. I was at a pond hockey rink. There were guys there. We played hockey. It lasted a pretty long time. But when I woke up, I was still on the ice in Boston." 

"That's not out of the range of possible symptoms. But, to be honest," Ray sighs, "If you were knocked out and seeing things, then you shouldn't be able to skate your way off the ice. That's a sign of a pretty severe concussion. Any other symptoms?" 

"Headache," Joe says, immediately, "Other than that, I feel all right. I mean, I don't think is gonna happen, but I could get back on the ice right now. And not playoff level of back on the ice. Like, I'd play with this and not worry." 

"Not a chance." Ray frowns. "So don't even bother. But I've got some tests for you to do, and we'll look at the opportunities depending on those results." 

Joe nods. He knows better than to argue. Instead he takes the tests in silence, counting the colors and remembering the various shapes and sizes. He knows cognitive tests when he sees them, at least. Ray hems and haws at his answers and nods at him in acknowledgement when they've finished. 

"You can hang out in the dressing room, but probably best to avoid the ice for now. Don't want to flip the reporters out." 

Joe stands up and meanders out with a chuckle. He knows Brodie can get pretty excitable about these kinds of things. He sits under his nameplate and closes his eyes and tries to make out more of those people on the rink and their half-judging voices and the way they play. It was _natural_ , like that was what they did. Like they had been born and bred for hockey. Not even like him, or even Ovechkin or Crosby - they screwed up on turnovers and had bad passes enough. But those guys knew about the puck. They knew how the puck moved, could predict the bounces, could calculate with a disturbing effectiveness how the puck would move from one stick to another. 

Part of him goes _your hallucinations would be as good as you want to be, duh_ , but the larger part of him doesn’t buy this. They were too good for him to have imagined them like that. And he couldn’t have imagined a perfect goalie. He didn’t know the first thing about being a perfect goalie. A hallucinatory Thornton goalie would be probably no better than a cardboard cutout. 

Ray comes back, eventually, and looks puzzled. 

“You look fine,” he says, putting down a PDF of the test results. Joe studies them without knowing what he’s looking at. “I mean, your tests say your brain is clean as a whistle. But me and Todd think you should sit the rest of the game out. And if you even try to argue I’ll take the blades out of all your skates.” 

Ray only makes ridiculous threats when he’s serious. Joe is pretty sure he’ll have better luck on the coach than the head trainer. Instead, he watches the game from the locker room. They’re down 3-1. He promises, not for the first time, to show Boston what they’re missing, how good he is. 

In between the second and third period the team files in. Patty drops next to him, sweaty and disgusting, and begins to unwrap his gear. 

“You feeling okay?” Patty asks. Joe nods. 

“Tests look fine. I mean, aside from a headache, I feel pretty great. I’ve definitely played with worse during the regular season. I want to play the rest of the game but that’s something I’ll have to bring up with Coach.” He looks down at his lap, at his mostly-undone gear.  

Patty hangs up his chestguard and rubs a towel over his face. “The hell did you say ‘I was playing pond hockey’ for?”

“I’ll tell you after the game. It’s kind of a long story.” 

 Patty gives him a very strange look. Joe shrugs and flags down McLellan as he’s stomping into the locker room. Everyone looks very in trouble. All Joe can find is anger that he’s not exactly able to give his team the what-for for playing like shit. 

“Don’t even try, Joe,” McLellan says, the moment he stands up. “I don’t care what the tests say, I know what Boston means to you, you’re done. Not after that. Come back tomorrow.” 

Joe is not accustomed to being so thoroughly told things. 

“Coach...” he starts. 

“Joe.” McLellan looks him straight in the eye, impassive and focused, like he always is. Joe know how much that calm face wants to win, knows how to read his coach. They argue sometimes about plays and who to put on what line and under what situations someone gets demoted, and for how long. They’re equals enough, that’s for sure. 

But the look his coach is giving him says there are no arguments. He’s the captain, but he’s still a player, and this is the coach.

“You’re done.” 

Joe sits down and tries not to look too frustrated. Patty gives him a comforting pat on the thigh; Demers, on his other side, shrugs helplessly at him. 

“So,” Joe asks Patty, grinning a half-dreading kind of grin, and trying not to feel too sick and angry about not being able to play, “Who drew the short straw of defending my honor?” 

“Not me,” replies Patty, and Joe has to laugh at that. The mental image of Patty dropping the gloves against Chara is too comical for reality, that’s for sure. “If Clowie were here, he’d go for it without blinking.” 

“He definitely would.” 

“Probably Bur or Desi.” Patty looks towards the forward. “But now I got to know about this pond hockey thing. Don’t think you’ll get off easy.” 

Joe stares at him. “I’m pretty sure ‘being knocked unconscious’ counts as not getting off easy.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Patty scoffs. “And you know what I meant. Good luck with your head. Feel better.” 

“Thanks, man,” Jumbo pats him on the shoulder. “Win for me.” 

“You got it.” 

The rest of the team watches some video. McLellan yells at them (adequately - Joe wishes he felt legitimately able to contribute to make it better), and they go back out, giving him high-fives as they leave. Joe watches on the TV as Burish “fights” against Chara, though it’s a little embarrassing for the forward, all things considered. They lose. 

* 

Joe stays out of the locker room after the game to avoid the possibility of being interviewed, because he can't imagine it looked good when he sat up and said something the cameras didn't pick up, and then everyone looked at him like he'd grown a second head. Instead he goes back to the quiet room and puts his head in his hands. When he closes his eyes, he still feels the cool winter breeze on his neck and can hear the sharp sound of of the wind. His headache is better now, more like a dull thud behind his eyes rather than the electric drill of a migraine. 

When he concentrates he can see the endless pond and the battered rink too clearly for it to be a hallucination. He tries to pick out anything that might indicate where this place is - somewhere up in London, or Sweden, but there's nothing. It's no rec pond, no signs indicating it's okay to play. There's no stands for the parents or girlfriends, no nearby parking lot carved out of snow. It's like the guys he imagined hiked to some isolated Yukon pond somewhere, dropped down their nets, and decided to play. 

What gets him is the uniforms. If he had hallucinated them, he would have recognized their jerseys, wouldn't he? They wouldn't be wearing sweaters he doesn't know, that look old-fashioned and well-worn with abuse. If he were to imagine his hallucinatory hockey game, it would have Bergeron and Patty and probably Cheecho, and the goalies would be Nabby on one end and Nemo on the other, all in their Sharks gear - none of these old-fashioned brown pads and the old-style slasher masks. And who would he make the opponents? JR, and Krejci, and Kane. Torres. The Sedins. 

"Hey." 

He startles at the voice. Patty flops down across from him, freshly showered in a t-shirt and jeans. "Coach wants to talk to you. Media's all gone, so you should be safe. Need someone to drive you home after?" 

"I feel fine," Joe replies, almost like he's admitting it. "I mean, if I didn't feel like I could drive, I'd tell you. But aside from a pretty minor headache, I feel pretty good. Only played half a game today. A little antsy." 

Patty grins. "You can go get hit by Chara some more if you'd like. I'm sure he'd be interested. Certainly was interested the first time."

There's something hard and sharp in Patty's tone, as subtle as the man always is with his anger.  It can take a while to learn how Patty really feels about things, but Joe doesn't know anyone better. Some part of him is pleased about Patty's anger, but most of him is mad about being out of this game, mad that he was caught with his head down, mad that he laid unconscious for any amount of time.

He fights the anger that grows in his stomach. Instead, he manages a weak laugh. "Thanks," he says, and Patty chuckles, standing up and leaning against the doorjam. 

"Go see coach. I'll wait to hear the story afterwards."

Patty might not be the captain anymore, but there's still plenty of captain in him. So Joe, as one does with a captain, listens. 

McLellan is sitting at the visiting coach’s desk, scowling at paper, which was more or less par for the course after a hard-fought loss (losses where they could have worked harder were usually indicated by the coach watching a lot of video and scowling), but a loss nonetheless. And a loss Joe hated to swallow, especially because of his inability to help. For a second, a similar scowl twisted across his face as he thought of it, but he let it go. 

There were later times to be pissed at things. Talking to his coach wasn’t one of them. If anything, anger never got anyone anything when it came to their even-keeled coach. 

They met after and before games on a fairly regular basses, though this moment had a clearly different air to it. No discussing of strategies. No deciding who hadn't worked hard enough and who was going to discipline them. No considering opposing lines and the best way to align the team in response. Instead, Joe flopped into one of the chairs in front of the desk, letting the silence stretch for a little while. 

Finally, McLellan sighed and put down his paper. 

"Ray's freaked out that your tests are normal. Me too. The way Chara hit you…" The coach looked away, shaking his head and frowning at nothing. He turned back, offering a helpless shrug. "He rocked you, Joe. Lined you up in his sights and hit you as hard as he could. You shouldn't be able to walk after a hit like that. And your face isn't even bruised, and your concussion tests are totally normal. It's like it never happened." 

Joe put his hand to his face and realized he hadn't even considered that. 

"So, I don't know. You shouldn't be ok. You lost consciousness. What I think is gonna happen is we're gonna ship you back to San Jose to get you retested, maybe get a brain scan. Because this is strange."

McLellan passed over the results. Joe looked at them for the second time without knowing he was looking at. 

"I feel fine, T," he said, after studying the paper for a while. There were a number of green indicators and high numbers, which seemed like a good thing to him. "I mean, if I wasn't fine, I'd say so. I have a little headache, but I don't feel like my brain is hemorrhaging or bruised or something. I know this is a big deal. I wouldn't hide it." 

The coach continued to frown at him. There was another silence. Joe studied the wall behind the other man's head. 

"Pond hockey?" 

Joe snorted and shook his head. "I guess when I was out, I had this hallucination. I mean, there was definitely pond hockey. I was playing with them. It was a good game, actually. But I didn't recognize anyone I was playing with? I don't know. You tell me, coach. You saw the hit. I don't know what my brain is doing anymore. I know I should be a mess. But I feel great. Even a little antsy, because I only played a period and a half."  

McLellan took the results bac.. "We're gonna get you back to San Jose probably tomorrow morning. The guys back there will give us more about your head. Ray will probably want to IMPACT you before you leave tomorrow, so be up early." He leaned back in the chair and dropped his hands into his lap. "I hope everything is as good as it feels, Joe. But…" 

"I know." Joe leaned back in his chair, staring at his hands. He thought about how good the puck had felt on his stick when he had been out - how smooth the ice had felt despite how rough pond hockey games got, without exception. He drew a hand through his hair and sighed, thinking of the crisp sound of ice and skates. It had felt so clear, so clean and simple and elegant. 

(He usually wasn't this poetic about hockey. A retest was probably a good idea.)

"I don't remember being hit, but I can imagine. And I've seen plenty of those hits before. But I feel fine. I wish I could say how or why. Not that it's not a good thing. It's just… weird. I feel fine. Not playoff fine, regular season fine." 

He offered a wry smile to McLellan, who chuckled. 

"Joe, if you feel fine, that's good. It's great. But you know how it is. Especially now, and you, and Chara. Kind of a big deal." 

Joe's smile turned into a grimace. "It's nice to know someone cares." 

The coach snorted. "Yeah, like no one cares about you. Get out. see you tomorrow, probably early. We don't fly out till the middle of the day, and the Bruins are on the road, so we might be able to borrow their facilities to test you before we leave for Tampa and you leave for San Jose." 

"Thanks, coach," Joe said, and he stood. McLellan smiled at him encouragingly as he turned, though when Joe looked over his shoulder the coach had immediately returned to frowning at his desk. 


	3. III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So, are you going to call Crosby?” Patty asks, after a while. 
> 
> “Doesn’t that seem a bit weird?” Joe replies. 
> 
> “What, you mean weirder than the part where you hallucinated a flawless pond hockey game with hockey players from the past and you feel like you didn’t just make this up?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dan Boyle is definitely a gin drinker. 
> 
> Your continued comments & kudos are vastly appreciated! They make my hockey heart beat with joy.

Drinking with Patty and Boyler is the most relaxing post-game activity there is. He's under no responsibility to look captainy, had no job to keep an eye on anyone, didn't need to worry about censoring himself. He could sound as pissed and frustrated and angry as he wanted with his two assistant captains and, more importantly, extremely close friends. He could growl at his drink or mope about his play or discuss his concussion hallucination that he can't shake off without being judged or risking the possibility of being ratted out or gossiped about. 

He doesn't have to worry about being a role model. 

The three of them are sitting alone at the corner of the hotel bar, the rest of the team out on the town and likely getting into absurd amounts of trouble (he can imagine the groups - Logan being the adult of the younger forwards with Clowe gone, Burns roping anyone not warned by Pavs or Logan into mischief of the defenseman's own doing), and he doesn’t mind it one bit. The quiet is nice.

Boyler is drinking gin and talking about Burish’s ‘fight’ against Chara, which sounds like anything but. 

“It was like that fight you had against Toews, remember? When he challenged you.” The defenseman orders another drink, extra dry, and considers it for a moment or two. “Chara knew someone was gonna challenge him. He was ready to take a couple of pity jabs. And Bur was trying to figure out exactly how hard pity jabs were, because he was the last person who wanted Chara to actually fight back. I bet the fans liked it, but it was stupid. Don’t know how Desi got out of that. That’s something a kid should have to suffer.” The man shakes his head and sighs. “But christ, the way Chara hit you, I couldn’t believe you could skate off the ice under your own power. You crumbled like newspaper.” 

“You always know how to make a man feel confident in himself,” Joe retorts, almost laughing. Boyle grins back and salutes him with his gin. 

“So,” Patty interjects, before anyone can get on a new topic. “Your first words after regaining consciousness are ‘I was playing pond hockey.’ That’s a way to make everyone think you got your head screwed on straight.” 

Boyle’s bushy eyebrows go up. 

“Oh man,” Joe says, and looks into his beer. Telling his coach what happened is one thing. Telling Boyler and Patty is a whole different story. But sometimes it feels good to tell it over again, not worried that he’s going to be put on IR. “I don’t remember getting hit. I got on the ice for that shift, and Logan gave me that really good pass, and we entered the zone had started a really good cycle. That’s it.” 

“Then pond hockey?” Boyle asks, incredulously. 

“I guess while I was unconscious I had this hallucination that I was playing pond hockey with these guys straight out of a Ken Burns documentary. Some of them had old-fashioned sweaters I didn’t know. One goalie had a slasher-flick hockey mask. A bunch of them didn’t have helmets. They had wooden sticks." Joe shakes his head, "But, I don't know, this is the part that I think is the strangest - they were really good." 

Patty tilts his head, equally disbelieving. "You had a hallucination filled with old-fashioned hockey players and they all played really well. Did you play with them?"

Boyle snorts into his gin and bites his lip to hold back the laughter. 

"Yeah," Joe continues, glaring at the defenseman. "I know it sounds stupid, but it's true. This is actually what happened. And I kind of freaked out a little, because you know, when you get hit in Boston and wake up in the Yukon, that freaks a guy out." 

"But you knew you just imagined this, right?"

"Don't grin at me like that, I'm your captain and I just got my eggs scrambled," Joe says to Boyler, who is wearing a shit-eating kind of look behind his gin. "And take it easy with the gin, I know that makes you drunk as a skunk and I'm not gonna be there covering for you at practice tomorrow. Coach knows about that, by the way, and he's gonna give it to you one of these days. So quit showing up on a gin hangover to practice. I'm gonna give it to you if he doesn't." 

Boyle shrinks a little at that and looks at his glass.

"Anyway," Joe continues, glaring at his defenseman, "I don't know, I guess this sounds insane, but I can't shake the feeling that I didn't just make it up. I mean, I had to have made it up. I didn't go anywhere. But it's nothing like what I would have made up. I wouldn't have been playing against some Habs from the 50's. I would have been playing against the Sedins and Chara and Raffi Torres. Nemo and Nabby would be there. Is that how hallucinations work?" 

"I don't know," Patty replies, looking into his beer and frowning at him. "But you know what, you know who might?" 

"Who?" 

"You should call Crosby. He might know. Especially given that he's more or less the king of getting his brain knocked. And he got hit in the face and isn't playing, so there's no reason he can't spend time talking about it with you." 

"I'm pretty sure the last thing Sidney Crosby wants to do is talk about what happens after he gets his bell rung. I mean, it's not really something I'd want to talk about with anyone outside like, you guys and Coach. And if like… I don't know, Jonny Toews called me to ask about it, I'd tell him to fuck right off." Joe takes a gulp of his beer and studies his friend. 

Patty shrugs at him. "You don't have to. But I'm just saying, if there's anyone who has enough experience with being thumped hard enough to make your head spin, it'd be him. And he has to tell the Pittsburgh media about it like every day, so I'm sure he's used to talking about. But I wouldn't advise you telling the Mercury News about your pond hockey game."

That makes all three of them chuckle a little. 

"So," Patty continues, "What about your hallucinatory game was so good?" 

"It was really smooth." Joe closes his eyes and takes a drink, and he can see it again, the endless ice and snow, the cloudless, glareless sky, feel the smoothness of the ice under his skates. It should have been rough. He should have been skating on a well-used pond. It had felt like fresh ice, even before practice. "No stupid turnovers. Really good form. No bad exits in the neutral zone. I felt like I'd played with those guys my whole life. They knew where I was. I knew where they are going to be. And the goalie was really good too. I hadn't played in a game that smooth in a long time. You know, no offense. But it was like…I can't explain it. It was like these guys knew hockey better than actual real people."

"Outplayed by a hallucination," says Patty, staring at the bar dejectedly. "There's something to motivate you." 

Joe gives him a good-natured shove. Patty just laughs. Boyle shakes his head and grins at them. 

“So, what’s the schedule with your cooked eggs?” Boyler asks. “If you’re not coming to Tampa with us, where’re you going?” 

“Going back to San Jose, but Coach says that Ray’ll probably want to test me again before I fly back. Apparently the Bruins are leaving but we’re going to get in there this morning. So, when you guy are going to Tampa, I’m going back home. I don’t know what I’m going to feel like in the morning, but I feel good now.” 

They talk for a while, about nothing. About the game, and Chara, and Boston, and history, and hockey. They talk about concussions and the lines in the team and what McLellan’s next step is and the playoffs. They toss around new possible power play strategies and neutral zone exits and make up trades in their heads. Joe talks about a play he was beaten on a few days ago that he’s still smarting over. Boyle complains about Matt Irwin getting drunk after one beer. Patty expresses he is much happier now that Couture usually herds the forwards. Eventually, a thoroughly-soused (and deeply in trouble, tomorrow) Boyle decides he’s had enough gin and is going to bed. 

They both watch him. 

“I’m gonna yell at him to curb the grin drinking when I’m playing again,” Joe says, frowning at Boyler’s retreating-staggering back. “Man’s ancient and still can’t control it. Can’t have Matty Irwin learning to get screwed up on poison before practice every day. He’s a role model now.” 

“Well, he should be able to get screwed up on gin when Irwin isn’t here, and you know as well as I do that he doesn’t show up hungover every day.” Patty replies, “That’s part of why you take time off from herding rookies, so you can drink and roll your eyes at them. I think he deserves at least a slightly longer rope.”  

Joe sighs. “I guess.” A beat. “I’m so glad Cooch likes to herd the rookies.” 

“I’ll drink to that.” 

They laugh and toast.

“So, are you going to call Crosby?” Patty asks, after a while. 

“Doesn’t that seem a bit weird?” Joe replies. 

“What, you mean weirder than the part where you hallucinated a flawless pond hockey game with hockey players from the past and you feel like you didn’t just make this up?” 

The whole situation is almost too ridiculous for him to deal with. He laughs at nothing, ending his last beer and pushing it towards the bartender. “Yeah, weirder than that. I don’t want to get anyone else involved, I guess.” 

“Just go for it,” Patty says. He stands up, finally, finishes his beer, and pats the captain on the shoulder. “What’s the worse that could happen, he laughs at you? No reason not to at least try to earn the badge in life of Sidney Crosby hanging up on you.” 

“Great.” They walk towards the elevator, slowly. Joe manages a grimace and leans against the elevator wall. “Me and Pierre McGuire.” 

Patty boggles at him for a few moments, drunk, and then bursts out laughing.


	4. IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You can decide what you believe and what you don’t believe,” retorts the man with a shrug. “Hockey has an energy. Get enough of that energy, it congeals. Coagulates. Hockey energy turns into hockey.” He gestured to the game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief reminder that this fic follows the events of the 2013 season (Crosby's jaw, Clowe's trade) while existing as a full season. Fiction! It's good for things. Roll with it.

He dreams of the pond. 

In his dream, he’s fully geared up, skates taped and stick in his hand. For reasons he doesn’t understand, he does have to snap his chinstrap on his helmet shut. When he looks out into a cloudless, perfectly blue sky, he sees them skating, checking hard and making those perfect saucer passes that Joe dreams of. 

He studies the environment. It’s a pretty big pond, but he can see the snowy edge of it off in the distance. There’s nothing else here besides that, besides an endless white plain that goes from hard ice to soft snow. He looks over his shoulder at the game (they don’t seem to have noticed him), and skates the other way. 

The pond seems bigger as he skates it, as rough as he would expect. He can see the edge of it just over there, but even when he turns on the jets and pushes harder and faster, he never seems to reach the end. The further he skates, the more disoriented he becomes. His chest starts to hurt, and his face - the area where Chara must have pummeled him - begins to pound, like someone took a meat tenderizer to his cheek. 

And his head. At first it starts low, like a dull thud behind his eyes, but the faster and further he gets the worse it hurts, elevating to jackhammer and then an earthquake, black spots exploding into his vision. 

His knees shake and give out, and he hits the ice - the pond didn’t seem this big when he looked at it - in an aching, agonied mess. He’s positive that he can’t stand up on his own, because he can barely think on his own. He just lays there, wondering what the next step is, if this means he wakes up, or if the mystery of his concussion symptom-free stay is over, or if he’s unconscious in bed, or in the hospital again. 

And then his symptoms evaporate, like they were never there.

When he opens his eyes, he’s staring at the face wearing the Habs jersey, as well as the more modern of the two goalies, and he’s about two feet from the rink proper on the pond. 

“Find anything good out there?” Habs Jersey asks, although his tone suggests that he knows exactly what’s out there. 

Joe sits up. Nothing hurts. He touches his face with his glove. Seems intact. He stares at his legs and his skates and out to the end of the pond, which never seemed to get any closer no matter how much he skated or how much pain he pushed through to get there.  
 He looks up at Habs Jersey. “The hell is this place?” he asks, “And who are you?” 

Habs Jersey smiles at him, all good nature and missing teeth, but there’s a twinkle in his eye that suggests he knows more than he’s letting on. He taps Joe’s thigh with his wooden stick. “That is a more complicated question then you’ll believe, I think. However, I could use a man who manipulates the puck like he was born to do so. Do you know where I could find one?”  

At first, Joe actually considers just throwing all his questions to the wind and saying yes. He’s still thinking about how perfect the game was last time, and doing that again is more than appealing. He studies the game for a really long time, whistling low at a sharp play behind the nest.

Instead he puts his glove on the wooden stick near him and stands up. “I’ve already not suffered through a horrible concussion and had the same vision in my unconscious concussion hallucination and my dream, and it is in no way how I would imagine hallucinating hockey. So just tell me and I’ll decide what I believe and don’t believe.” 

The goalie lifts his mask and spits on the pond. “Have fun, he’s your responsibility,” he says with a chuckle, and skates back to the game. 

Habs Jersey glares over his shoulder at the goalie, but he turns back to Joe after a moment. “All right, you win. Mind if we skate around the rink while I do so?”  

“Sure,” Joe agrees, and they skate in lazy, unhurried circles. Joe watches the game in the silence. It’s as good as he remembers, and a part of him definitely wants to forgo the explanation to get into it. He realizes, though, that all the spots are filled, even with one of the players skating here. There are six forwards, four defensemen, and two goalies out there, even with Habs Jersey here with him. 

He shakes his head and counts again, and comes up with the same number. 

“Well,” Habs Jersey starts, shaking him out of his thought, “I guess the simplest explanation is that we’re hockey spirits.” 

“Hockey spirits,” Joe replies, giving him a doubtful look. 

“You can decide what you believe and what you don’t believe,” retorts the man with a shrug. “Hockey has an energy. Get enough of that energy, it congeals. Coagulates. Hockey energy turns into hockey.” He gestured to the game going on.

“So I didn’t make this up. This was already here.” A pause. Joe isn't sure whether to feel more crazy that he's been teleported to hockey spirit land or less crazy that he didn't make up feeling like this place was here before him. “How did I get here?” 

“You have enough hockey energy in you to get here. It’s a tough supernatural place to find. Why now?” Habs Jersey tilts his head and shrugs. “Don’t know. Easier to find after the first time, though. Are you gonna be here every time? We don’t know. Don’t mind if you come, of course. Love playing with you."

This is a tougher pill to swallow than Joe originally expected. He stares at the ice as they skate, trying to untangle his thoughts in the silence. There are a lot of questions bouncing in his head. He picks out the perfect words like he would with the media.

“Last time you said I was due for a streak,” he tilts his head towards the other man, who is still watching the game intently. “What did you mean? Can you control that?” 

“We do allocate some of the energy back into the players. Meant exactly what I said. We can control that, though we don’t all the time. Sometimes, though, a little magic is needed. Miracles do happen, and all that." 

This makes Joe stop mid-lap. Part of him thinks he has genuinely and a hundred percent lost his mind. But the other half of him is imagining these people - things, if they’re made by ‘hockey energy’ or whatever it is - talking about him and his team and other players and deciding how to ‘allocate their energy’ in who has a points streak. Deciding who wins and loses games. Deciding if that shot will clang off the post and go in or bounce out. 

That part of him goes hot with rage that this thing controls his game, and he has to choke it back down. 

Habs Jersey stops with him and watches him think this through. 

“So, wait,” Joe says, and the revelation hits him like a blocked shot at the end of his train of thought. “You’re the hockey gods.” 

Habs Jersey thinks about this for a few moments, then grins his disarming grin. “I guess you’re right.” A pause. “Now can we play?”

Joe stares at him for a long time. Then, huffing an absurd laugh because there can't any greater blasphemy than denying a request to play hockey with the hockey gods, he skates onto the rink proper. 

* 

Joe wakes up in his hotel room and stares at the ceiling for a long time. The clock says 6:08 am. 

He calls Sidney Crosby. 

_”Thornton?”_

Crosby sounds like he’s been awake for some time, so that’s good.

“Hey Sid, it’s Jumbo. How’s your jaw?” 

_”It’s fine. Hurts. Not too bad though. Saw that hit Chara put on you. You doing all right?”_

He also sounds politely confused that Joe Thornton is calling him at 9 am in the morning, which is to be expected. 

“Better than I thought. Have kind of a weird question for you. Feel free to hang up on me if you think I sound like I’m losing my mind. When you got hit, and if you were knocked out, did you see a hockey game? Like a pond hockey game, with guys in old-fashioned uniforms?” 

There’s a long silence. Joe thinks he might actually have to text Pierre McGuire and tell him they’re in the ‘Sidney Crosby hung up on me’ group together. But he doesn’t hear a dial-tone or a click, so he stays on the line. 

Finally, Crosby’s voice comes through the line, slightly hoarse. 

_”You too?”_


	5. V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I believe you, Joe, I just want you to know that this is getting steadily more ridiculous. If this was anyone else I would tell you you've lost your mind." 
> 
> "I think I have lost my mind," Joe replies, and Patty laughs. "And it gets worse."  

Joe has to pause and consider what kind of life he’s leading where he is actually believing his concussion hallucination is really him going to the land of the hockey gods. He’s not exactly sure when it came to this, and he realizes that he actually doesn’t feel any less crazy even though Sidney Crosby is admitting he’s had a similar experience.

“Yeah, me too. Twice now, actually. Once at the hit, and then when I went to sleep last night I went there again. Did you tell anyone?” 

 Crosby offers him a disbelieving laugh. _“Flower, Geno. You, I guess. Told the trainers I hallucinated. But, you know, concussions... I figured it was just my brain being scrambled.”_

“Yeah, me too.” Joe stands up with his phone and opens the blinds to his hotel room. Boston looks nice in the morning, just waking up, the sleepy commuters driving to their desk jobs. “When you were there, did you play with them?” 

_”No, I kind of flipped out. I ran. Or skated, I guess. But I guess I panicked and... I didn’t want to play hockey when I was passed out from being hit in hockey. And when I was skating, I just got sicker and sicker, and felt worse and worse, and... I don't know.”_

All of a sudden, everything becomes incredibly clear. He thinks back to trying to run away from the game, about the pounding headache and the sick feeling in his stomach and the way his face had been hit by a meat tenderizer. 

“If that ever happens again, just play with them, okay? I did. They’re good. The game is good.” 

_”You think I should have played hockey in my hallucinatory concussion hockey game? Is this some kind of joke?”_

“No, it’s not a joke,” Joe stares at Boston and tries to figure out the best way to explain this without it sounding ridiculous. Thing this, that’s exactly what it is. “Just.... you don’t have anything to lose. It’s a hallucination, so, you can’t get hurt. You know what I mean?” 

_”Thanks, Thornton._ ” Crosby sounds a little derisive now. Tired. _”Don’t work yourself too hard after being knocked like that. See you soon.”_

There are other questions he could ask - about the game, and Crosby’s hits, and the concussion syndromes, and playing in that mystical hockey-god game - but the man sounds a little ticked, like he thinks Joe is making fun of him. And it’s not really worth it to make Crosby any angrier, especially if that means he has to fight Cranky (or Desi has to fight Cranky) the next time they meet up. 

“You too. Get well soon.” 

Crosby hangs up and Joe stares at the phone and cards his fingers through his hair, wondering what the hell his next step is. 

* 

He was hoping to eat breakfast with Patty and Boyler to give them the update on his conversation with Crosby, but when he gets to the hotel breakfast, Patty is already entertaining Cooch and Gomez. Rather, Couture is bemoaning the newest trouble he’s had to drag Wingels out of, this time a particularly insistent cougar. He already has his audience of two in tears before Joe gets there.

The captain sits down next to A and shoots him a knowing look. Patty wipes the tears from his eyes and quirks an eyebrow, trying to come back to his senses again and finish the rest of his food.

“Just wait until you’re really the captain,” Joe tells Couture, stuffing his face as quickly as possible and grinning a little. That possibility is a pretty likely one, all things considered. He watches Patty wipe his mouth and stand up. “Then Burnzie becomes your responsibility too, and it’s not a fate I’d wish on even my worst enemy.” 

Logan looks stricken, and everyone at the table laughs. 

They’ve eaten early enough that Joe and Patty can take a little walk outside the hotel in downtown Boston. It’s cold, but it’s nice enough. 

"I called Crosby," Joe says, as they walk. They don't really fit in in their jeans and t-shirts and hoodies with the commuters, but Joe's accustomed to standing out, being a head taller than most average human beings. They get a few sour looks from those who recognize them, but no one seems bothered enough (or has the time) to actually talk any trash. 

"And?" Patty says, looking at him expectantly. "What did he say? Did you come to new conclusions about your mysterious injury-free situation?" 

"He has seen it. And I think the reason it never rescues him from his brain injuries is that he doesn't play hockey with them." 

"Them being your hallucinations." Patty smiles his familiar smile, not quite laughing at him, though the look is in his eyes. "So, they only rescue you from your brain trauma if you play hockey with them?" He stops, studying the first coffee shop he sees for Bruins logos or signs, and upon seeing none enters. "I believe you, Joe, I just want you to know that this is getting steadily more ridiculous. If this was anyone else I would tell you you've lost your mind." 

"I think I have lost my mind," Joe replies, and Patty laughs. "And it gets worse."  

Patty whistles low and orders coffee black and extra hot. 

"When I went to sleep last night, I ended up back there. And out of curiosity, I started skating away from the game, right? And no matter how long I skated, I never reached the end of the pond. And I could see the end of the pond, it just got further and further away the far I skated. like I was going nowhere. And the more I skated, the more everything started to hurt. Not like, regular skating-hurt, like my face felt like someone took a meat tenderizer to it, and my head started to throb, and my whole body started getting shaking and getting weak." 

"Like you've been concussed?" Patty asks, taking his ordered coffee and sipping carefully at it. He studies Joe for a long time as they walk down the street, and Joe watches the wheels in his head slowly turn. Patty's always been sharp as a tack, but he's a little more thoughtful and a little less loud about his thinking or his conclusions. Instead of talking, Joe just waits for his friend to come to some kind of result - usually the right one. "What you're telling me is you playing hallucinatory hockey is keeping you from getting concussion syndrome." 

Joe shrugs helplessly. 

"Are we in some fantasy land and no one told me?" Patty takes another drink of his coffee and studies their neighborhood. "We should probably head back. By the way, if you took us to your fantasy land and we can't beat Boston in the Jumbo Fantasy World, I don't know what's the point of life anymore." 

That just makes Joe laugh. He stares enviously at Patty's coffee but shrugs off the option to go back to the place. Instead, he sticks his hands in his pockets and stares up at the slowly warming sky. "Do you want to hear the even crazier part, or would you prefer that over the phone before or after the Tampa game?"

"How can this possibly get any crazier?" A beat. "Actually, just tell me later. I think I've had enough of this for now. No offense." 

"None taken." He opens the door to the hotel. Patty grins and tilts his head in thanks. 

"Must have hit your head so hard you became a nice guy," Patty says. Joe offers him a half-hearted glare, significantly weakened by the grin on his face, and goes to find McLellan for his schedule update. 

* 

 

The bowels of TD Bank Garden are unsettlingly quiet when him and Ray sit down for more tests later that morning. He counts colors and remembers words in order and presses a button when a light flashes. Part of him wants to blurt out that he is protected from his injury by the hockey gods right now and just watch what Ray does, how unimpressed the man can look at once. He's seen some good faces on their head trainer in regards to their injuries, and he's pretty sure this one would would take the crown as most absurd Ray-face. 

But he doesn't. Instead he just does all the tests and Ray stares at him and chews on his lip and shakes his head. Ray reads printouts and scowls and runs a hand through his short hair. He looks nervously at Joe and back at his readouts, then back at Joe, and back at his readouts. 

"You're fine," Ray announces. 

"I know," Joe replies, and he tries not to grin too much, or blurt his acid-trip of a potentially true story.

"Todd gave me your ticket to San Jose. You're flying direct in a couple hours." Ray reaches into his pocket and hands him the ticket. "They're leaving before you. After this, I'm heading there."

Joe studies the ticket. It's not first class, but business class is good enough. He meanders down the airport with his stuff, feeling naked without the rest of the team or his bag of gear, and gets on the plane. Instead of all those things he's accustomed to, he has the sharp smell of a pond and the invisible eyes of spirits he's not sure if he believes in. 

He doesn't think this is an upgrade.


	6. VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The guy sitting next to him on the plane rolls up the sleeve of his dress shirt, where he has a gray fin on a teal background tattooed onto his forearm.

He's staring out the window and wondering who else to call - he can't imagine that Crosby would be thrilled by him asking to talk to Malkin given that the man probably already thinks he's lost his mind. He's idly paying attention to the TV in the back of the seat in front of him when he hears the sound of someone clearing his throat. Once, twice, and, so he looks, finally, to the guy next to him. 

 _Uh oh_ , goes part of him. 

The guy rolls up the sleeve of his dress shirt, where he has a gray fin on a teal background tattooed onto his forearm.

Joe suppresses the groan with some effort and says, perhaps a little sharper than he intends, "I'm fine." 

The guy pulls back in his chair. "Sorry," he says, quickly. "Didn't mean to interrupt anything." 

"No, I'm sorry," Joe replies, and a small part of him wants to stare out the window and let the guy tell all his friends at his office that he meant Joe Thornton on a plane, and by the way, the guy is a total douchebag that wouldn’t even look at him or talk to him. That way, Joe can go back to his own problems, and not have to deal with the starstruck gaze of some man more or less his age.

Of course, that part of him is never the majority, even when he wishes it was. 

So instead, he carries on. "I didn't mean to sound like a  jerk. Just been a long few days, you know?" 

The guy grimaces. "I've got Aleve if you want it. Checked my stronger stuff, sorry." 

Joe shakes his head and pretends like the guy didn’t just offer him Oxycodone or something. "I'm good. Been a fan long?" 

"Watched them in the Cow Palace. When they traded for you, I knew it was gonna be great. I mean, not as good as it has been, but I was a big fan of the deal." 

Joe grins at him. It's always strange meeting fans who've loved the team longer than he has. He offers a hand in their cramped airplane quarters, something laughing in his smile. "I'm Joe. Nice to meet you." 

"Adam," says the guy, and enthusiastically shakes his hand. "Sorry for being that guy. I mean, I hope this isn't the worst for you. But I mean, Joe Thornton, next to me, on the airplane. Pretty cool." 

"Even hockey players have to sit business class sometimes," Joe says, and the guy laughs a little bit, maybe realizing that he sounds like a ridiculous fanboy. "Promise, we drink beer and yell at our TVs too. Want me to sign something for you?" 

"Oh man, would you?" 

"Sure." 

Joe watches with a half-embarrassed kind of amusement as the guy yanks his carryon from the storage above their seat and tears through his luggage in the middle of a plane, obviously not caring about the fact most of the plane is muttering about him. He finally yanks out an old style Thornton jersey, complete with A. Joe studies the jersey with some fondness - he liked those uniforms - before taking the sharpie offered and signing it. 

"Can I have a picture, too?" Adam asks.  

"Sure." 

One cramped cell phone picture later, he puts his headphones on and stares back out then window. Adam looks at him and turns back to his iPad, thankfully getting the hint. 

Joe lists concussions to himself and tries to figure out what numbers he has for a while, before his mind travels back to hockey god land, and his expected streak, and his total lack of anything resembling a concussion. When he switches the TV to ESPN, they're talking about how he's a miracle in progress. 

He looks at Adam out of the corner of his eye and goes for it.

"Hey," he says to Adam, who whips off his headphones at an incredible speed. 

"Yeah?" Adam replies, and there's a pause and a sound that Joe thinks is the guy trying to figure out how to address him. He's not sure he'd be able to handle being called 'Mr. Thornton' by a 30-something businessman. 

"You believe in the hockey gods?" 

Adam blanches at him, as Joe expected. He gapes for a second, and Joe's about to repeat the question before the guy recovers. 

"What, like actual gods, or like cursing random chance?" 

"Whatever you think it is." 

Adam sits back in his chair and actually thinks about this for a while, chewing his lip. He looks less starstruck than he has all flight, which is actually an improvement. 

"Well, I mean, you're going to get some really shitty bounces and really good ones," he starts, and picks up steam as he speaks. "It's a fast sport. The physics are weird. Sometimes the puck is just gonna be where you need it, and sometimes it's gonna bounce right onto your opponent's stick. Sometimes it's gonna hit the boards funny and who knows how that's gonna turn out? Sometimes it's gonna be bouncing and rolling all over so you just have to hope it goes your way. You can do a lot of planning but sometimes the ice is bad, or whatever." He pauses. "So I guess I believe in that. But I think that stuff kind of evens out in a season, you know? Not that I don't curse and thank the hockey gods during games all the time or anything, I do that all the time. And the post gods." He laughs a little, offering a sheepish grin. "Like, I don't know if you want to talk about this, but I thanked the hockey gods profusely you skated off after Chara  crushed you." 

"I thanked the hockey gods too," he says, wry enough that Adam gives him a strange look. He waits for the man to build enough confidence to ask the obvious question. 

"Why? Do you?" 

Bingo. 

"I don't know what I believe," Joe says.

"Well, I don't really think I'd like to know if there were hockey gods," Adam continues, before Joe can get his headphones back on. He gives the guy an odd look, so he continues. "Like, if there are gods controlling hockey, then how much does the player control? How good is Crosby? How good is Lundqvist? How good is Tyler Seguin? Or did these guys just sell their souls and now they're good?" Adam looks down at his tattoo, then back to Joe. "And what happened if you could figure out how to get the hockey gods in your favor? Like, if you sacrifice a virgin then you get a hat trick. Well, how much of that is you, and how much of you is gods giving you wings?" 

“Well, isn’t that an advantage you should be able to press if you can? Big body guys have big bodies. They didn’t control that, but it’s still something they can use. Fast guys use their speed.” Joe retorts, though most of his mind is still picking through the possibility that he is cheating a little bit, right now. 

“Yeah, but if you’re fast, you still have to run and practice. I don’t know what Patty does to stay fast but I’m sure he sinks hours into it. And I’m sure that any big guy spends hours and hours at the gym. If being favored by the hockey gods is something you do by sacrificing virgins, well that’s not really a hockey skill.” He frowns. “I mean, if I could sacrifice a virgin and be Sidney Crosby, doesn’t it seem like cheating? I’m a location scout. The last time I played hockey was middle school. The Hart should be a little out of my league.” 

Joe thinks about this for a while. 

“I didn’t think of that. Thanks.” 

Adam grins at him, mischievous. “You been sacrificing virgins? I won’t tell.”

“That’s me,” Joe replies, and he laughs because it’s almost the truth. “Favored of the hockey gods, cheater, and noted sacrificer of virgins.”  
 Adam laughs louder and shakes his head. “As long as it’s you who’s doing the sacrificing and no other teams. Then it’s fine.” 

Joe shakes his head, grins, and puts his headphones back on.

When they get off the plane Adam thanks him for putting up with him and hurries off. Joe pulls his hat low over his eyes and keeps his head down at the airport, trying not to grin to himself as he imagines the 'I sat next to Joe Thornton on the plane and he's a total nut job' work conversation tomorrow at Adam's water cooler. 

He finds the man with the "Joe T" sign and lets himself be driven without complaint.


	7. VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You know what happens if this is fair, Joe," the guy continues, "If we're not protecting that brain of yours, it takes that hit. And you're smart enough to know what happens if you take that hit." 

As he expected, the tests come back normal. They brain scan him and IMPACT him and fMRI him and EEG him, and some other abbreviations and names he doesn’t catch or doesn’t remember. He stands and sits in a record-setting number of medical contraptions, which is saying something given his history as a successful professional athlete. 

The doctors look at each other and at him and, after several hours of this, they pronounce him done. They say he’s one hundred percent heathy, and his brain, while it has experienced some good knocks over his career, is more-or-less a perfectly healthy brain. They’re all very certain it hasn’t sustained any major concussive impacts in the last few days, at least according to the results. 

He can hear the frown in his coach’s voice when he talks to him about the results after dinner. 

_”Joe, you’re clear to play when we get back there. But I just want you to know that I think it’s insane you’re not even the least bit sick from that.”_

“I don’t understand it either,” he replies, because while he might have a piece or two over his coach, there’s no way he gets the whole puzzle, and the last thing he needs to do right now is have McLellan think he’s nuts. “But all I can tell you is that I feel good.” 

_”Well, it’s not worth it for you to come here. But we’ll see you back at home for Vancouver. Take it easy.”_

“Yes sir,” he says, and McLellan hangs up. He goes home to his family, who all look pretty pleased to see him despite the obvious issues that result in him being here a day early. But there’s definitely something to be said for spending a night with your family. 

* 

He’s no longer surprised by showing up on the pond, but when he looks around for the player in the Habs jersey, he doesn’t see him. Or maybe not him - Joe isn’t sure if gods or spirits or whatever the hell they are have genders - but it’s not here. The game is still going on, of course, and when he concentrates he can hear all the regular sounds of hockey games, chirping and hissing ice and the puck on sticks. 

No one comes out to say hello to him, or answer his questions about cheating or sacrificing virgins or Crosby or Gretzky or Savard. He stands just outside the rink for a while, trying to pick out the one guy he is learning about in this group. There’s something about all the players, about how they all look not-quite-the-same, high Eastern European foreheads and broad hockey-player shoulders and strong Canadian jaws. It’s unsettling, how at first glance they all look the same. 

Joe closes his eyes and steadies himself. When he’s not badgering more information out of his missing Virgil of sorts or playing, the insanity of the whole situation hits him hard upside the face, not unlike rogue shoulders of large Boston defensemen. 

He skates in slow circles outside the rink, suddenly feeling a little intimidated. 

“Thornton!” One of the guys shouts, “Get off your ass and into the game!” 

He doesn’t move from where he’s idling, still watching. He knows that there’s an intermission coming up, something in the back of his head telling him, like an invisible clock. Everyone has one, he bets. They all know exactly when intermission is, when the period comes to an end. And it does, too, and they sit in snowy ditches and on benches Joe doesn’t remember being there, unwrapping their skates and unfogging their visors and peeling off pads. 

He sits next to the modern goalie, who is discarding his pads in record time. 

“Where’s, uh... Where’s the guy in the Habs jersey?” He asks. 

The goalie raises his eyebrows at him, and then looks across the bench and points. 

“You are not in my demographic,” the goalie says, with an accent Joe can’t place - Scandinavian, maybe, but it’s hard to tell. Joe follows the pointed finger to another group. He knows, instantly, that those guys are his types - playmakers, top-6 forwards, leaders, captain types. They study him as a collective, which is no less unsettling than the fact they all look more or less the same and, if he squints, even a little like him. 

So Joe goes over there, instead, and he looks down at the three guys. 

“He’s not a real person, you know. I mean, no more than any of us are,” says one, the one on the far left, who’s wearing an unfamiliar Flyers jersey with a surly expression and doesn’t have a helmet. “I don’t know why he even bothered to not play for you so you could question him. It’s kind of disrespectful for a guy like you to be demanding answers from him. Like a rookie sticking his nose out where it doesn’t belong. Be seen and not heard.” 

Closing his eyes and blinking hard does not make this make any sense. 

The one in the center, easily the most modern of the three - modern Penguins jersey, visor, full gear, carbon fiber stick - shakes his head and sighs. “Joe, we’re all the same thing. We’re not people. We’re just hockey energy that makes hockey. Obviously, there aren’t going to be enough players on the ice at any one time to represent everything that hockey is. So some of us are here and some of us aren’t. We’re one collective, though. So we all know what he said to you. And we could all say the same things. But we represent different types of teams and players. So, you got lucky and got him, and not broad street asshole over here, who likely would have ran you off the rink and, well, you know what happens next." 

Flyers Jersey scowls at both of them and laces his skates with a new intensity. He glares as he skates back towards the ice. Pens Jersey scowls at his back.

"What an asshole," he says. Joe finds himself nodding along. "Intermission's over, so we've got to play. That's what you do when intermission is over." Pens Jersey taps his ankles. "You should too." 

"I don't know if I should," Joe says, haltingly. "I've been thinking about this. I don't know if it's fair." 

"Is that what you want, for this to be fair?" says the third guy, suddenly, and Joe looks at him. There's something about him that the man can't put his finger on, like he doesn't have an era or a time or a place that he specifically identifies with. Instead this particular player just seems bright and cold like a hockey rink, sharp like skates. It makes the hairs on the back of Joe's neck prick up. He isn't sure if he wants to play with this guy, who seems dangerous in a whole different way than Flyers Jersey. He seems dangerous in the way that makes you feel like you don't stand a fraction of a chance out there. 

This guy could undress Joe from the puck and he knows it immediately, and it's not a feeling he likes.

When he tries to focus on the guy’s outfit, everything blurs.

"You know what happens if this is fair, Joe," the guy continues, "If we're not protecting that brain of yours, it takes that hit. And you're smart enough to know what happens if you take that hit." 

He thinks about how it felt for those five seconds, lying on the ice, dizzy and sick and unable to breathe. The painful jello feeling in his legs, and the tightness in his chest, and his whole head aching. 

He thinks about Marc Savard, and Crosby, and Malkin, and Skinner, and Tarasenko. 

The players all skate past him, and the retorts die on his lips. He enters the game and tries to figure out who disappeared for him, what these players are and what they mean, and how much he really wants things to be fair, but everyone on both teams yells at him for being distracted, and the guys on his team threaten to kick him off. 

The two seconds of lying crippled far away from the game on the pond are enough to make it an effective enough threat, and, even worse, it makes him wonder how much he cares about fairness after all.


	8. VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There isn't supposed to be thinking in hockey, Joe," he says, with a sagely kind of nod. "You just go. You think too hard, you miss the shot. When you get it, you have to go. You ask too many questions for a hockey player." 

It seems like he could play forever with them, never getting tired, never feeling achey or exhausted, only sore where they check him (the helmetless players harder, leaving the ice and leading with flailing elbows with no regard for head safety or concussion protocols), and never sore enough to quit. It's hard to imagine playing 20 minutes straight conceptually, but it happens here, in this non-space he doesn't understand, with players that aren't people. They won't talk to him during the game, all hard-sharp focus, with plenty of chirping and references he both does and doesn't understand, insults from the twenties interspersed with the sharp curses he's familiar with. 

He could do this forever. The game is beautiful enough for it, that's for sure, nothing sloppy or clumsy. Even the scrums and the fights - and they exist, pushing and shoving and the hard rights and uppercuts Joe's accustomed to - have a grace to them, like things are planned. This has all happened before, a hundred million times. There are no off days or getaway games in strange hockey pond world. 

"Are there post gods?" He asks Pens Jersey in the next intermission. The guy took a stick to the mouth and is missing two teeth, but there's nothing medically complicated about the wound, like the teeth were baby teeth after all and losing them is just what he does. "Boards gods? Ice gods? Funky bounce gods?" 

"Did you feel them?" Pens Jersey asks. "Maybe you oughta go touch the post and find out." 

Joe looks out onto the ice and chews his lip thoughtfully. 

"I'd think I'd rather not know," he says, after thoughtful minute. "I'd rather just play." 

Pens Jersey smiles at him and gives him a gentle shove. 

"There isn't supposed to be thinking in hockey, Joe," he says, with a sagely kind of nod. "You just go. You think too hard, you miss the shot. When you get it, you have to go. You ask too many questions for a hockey player." 

"Yeah, well," Joe retorts, running a hand through his hair and scratching his beard idly, "Coach likes it when we asks questions about new systems. Explaining is good for the kids. I think being teleported to hockey god land falls in that category." 

"It's more complicated than just being a god, Joe, but it's hard to explain in any way other than just saying so. You couldn’t understand what we are, how things are for us. You’re too close to the game, and you’re just mortal, after all.”

Joe shrugs and tries not to be insulted. Instead, he sits down and yanks off his gear, because that’s what you do in intermission. Then, he plays three more periods. 

* 

When he wakes up it’s 11 AM and Tabea looks worried about him, but doesn’t ask. Rather, she says that there’s lunch, and they eat lunch together, and talk about the season and his head. He thinks about telling her about hockey god land and decides against it. Rather, he gives her a kiss and goes to the gym and tries not to think about anything but making his muscles scream at him. He’s not playing today or tomorrow, so the tough workout is definitely something he can take some pleasure in. And there’s nothing like being barely able to stand in the shower, almost laughing at the adrenaline and exhaustion and aching. 

The Tampa Bay game is on at four, so he drags his tired corpse in front of his TV with a beer. It’s always strange to watch the games, and even more so on TV. It looks so slow and easy from a distance, like of course he should shoot the puck and why wasn't Patty at one exact spot at one exact moment, and why wasn’t Boyler exactly where they needed him to be to keep the puck in? He feels a little bad for giving reporters a hard time when he watches TV or from the press box, because how would they know any better if they didn’t play.

He winces at how badly they play in their own end to start the game, more or less flailing in deep and being outworked along the boards. Half of him wants to call the locker room and yell at them, but as they can barely manage to complete a change and throw some new defenders on the ice, he decides against it. But it doesn’t stop him from being furious at the play, especially because even when they manage to get the puck, it’s all sloppy transitions and bad breakouts and they don’t have it for long. Randy and Drew’s voices suggest they’re more less just as disgusted as he is, and he tries to imagine what the two of them are muttering to each other during intermission and what McLellan is saying on the bench when they cut to him. That take, with one hand on Demers’ shoulder and mouth near his ear, is a an obvious critique on the defenseman’s terrible posistioning in the previous play. And Woodcroft’s comment to Logan, in the next shot, is likely equally as negative. He just shakes his head and sighs. 

Tampa Bay takes advantage of them and takes an easy 2-0 lead in the first. Joe shakes his head and scowls at the TV and imagines what he’d say in intermission, exactly how he would phrase the things that very much need to be said right now. _Play harder, like you want to win_ , might be one of them. Tabea comes over and sits with him, and it’s equal parts nice and strange to have her viewing the game with him. He points out things in the intermission play review they do, and she nods along. He adds bits of information it takes being the captain to know just to make her laugh, about how Logan is likely not wearing any pants in the intermission interview, that the shot of them looking like hardworking and disrobing hockey players is more or less taken in between them throwing pads and disgusting towels at one another. Although, he explains, it’s more likely that McLellan is looking too pissed for any serious entertainment of that sort. 

They start the second period better. They even manage a fourth-line goal, messy and chaotic in front of the net, and Desjardins sees it before some Tampa Bay Bolt that Joe doesn't know and Desi pokes it in a second before the other man can clear it out. It slices the lead in half and gives Joe a little hope. One-goal games are his favorite, the intensity of it, the feeling of sitting on a razor’s edge as you either a) stare at the lead knowing it’s more than within reach or b) glance back behind you, seeing your opponent, closer than they appear, in the metaphorical rear-view mirror. 

It’s late in the second period when he sees it.

They’re still down a goal, but they actually look like they can pull this out. The team is playing well, definitely outplaying Tampa Bay now, and even more in the latter half of the period. His line - or what would be his line, at least - is doing the best, Couture fitting into his slot perfectly. The kid’s gonna take his job in a few years, he thinks affectionately. 

What happens is the Bolts are breaking out and coming into the Sharks' offensive zone, not quite crashing to the net, but enough. Burns is half-shoving St. Louis out of his screening position, which is more than mildly comical given their height difference, careful to not evoke a roughing or a cross-checking but certainly hard enough to take advantage of the 65 pounds he likely has on the other forward. What happens is Stamkos gets the puck on the cycle, and Burns shoves St. Louis, and Joe feels something ice-cold and sharp on the back of his neck. What happens is Burns pushes St. Louis hard enough that he staggers forward and loses his balance, and as St. Louis is falling, the shot Stamkos takes ricochets off St. Louis’ shoulder and into the net behind Niemi. 

He stands up sharply, startling his wife, and puts a hand to the back of his neck, where there’s still the chill of a winter breeze. It makes his stomach drop at a nauseating pace, and he stares at the TV. The Bolts celebrate, but he barely notices them. What he sees are unusual shadows on the ice, ghosts of hockey players that don’t really exist.

“Joe?” asks Tabea, looking up at him to where he’s standing. “Are you okay?” 

Joe snaps his mouth shut, only realizing now that he was gaping. 

“I’m losing my mind,” he says, and before she can ask, he takes his keys and his wallet and leaves, not even bothering to turn the TV off. 

* 

Automatically, he drives to the tank and parks in the spots across from the main entrance. He turns off the car and gets out, leaning against the driver's side door, staring up at the place. He enters through the players’ entrance with his key, going straight to the video room and shuffles through the tape until he finds the one he wants. 

_VAN, 2011, G5 PO_ says the file, and he fast-forwards all the way to the end. He remembers laying in bed, wide awake, staring at the ceiling and wondering why hockey was the way it was. How their hard play - everything about that game, that series - could end on a fluke. How they were better than that. They deserved better.

Even before the stanchion - and whatever god is associated with it, if there is any - he can see the flitting shadows like swarms of gnats, appearing and disappearing at irregular intervals, leaving bouncing pucks and slightly-raised sticks behind. They come into existence in the wake of passes bounced successfully off skate or shots blocked by unaware defensemen. They shift players without them noticing, and slightly and subtly draw them out of position, and pull their attention towards invisible spots on the boards and away from their men. They blow on the puck and it bounces on the bad ice. 

And then. 

Then he remembers the hard rage that burned in his stomach for the three seconds he allowed when figuring out the hockey gods. It wells up again, hot and sharp in his stomach, because he sees as clearly as he can that unowned shadow on the ice tipping the puck as it bounces off the stanchion and right onto Bieska’s stick. Bieska shoots and scores, and the video ends, paused on Niemi staring at his net with the puck in it. 

Joe bites his lip hard enough that it causes him more pain than his aching muscles, and he squeezes the remote hard enough that he thinks he might break it.


	9. IX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You screwed everything up. I watched the tape and I saw you give the damn puck to Bieska. I saw it move and you blew on it and it bounced right over to him. We worked fucking hard to win that series and you blew it. I'm trying to win a goddamn cup and I didn't get this far to have some spirits blow it for me." 

He does break the remote, not by squeezing it too hard, but by throwing it down on the ground as hard as he can. The plastic thing pops into tiny little pieces that get scattered across the floor, and he falls heavily into one of the nearby folding chairs, staring at the ground and trying to make sense of his racing thoughts. He's not a particularly angry guy but he's steaming right now, trying to settle himself and go back to his life, like he can forget that someone else - something else, some cosmic force - is the one controlling his life and his game. 

Losing on random chance sucks. Losing on the whims of some spirit hurts worse, makes him boil with this rage that he doesn't know what to do with. He's definitely too pumped with adrenaline to attempt sleep at this point to give them all a piece of his mind, to tell them to let real fucking hockey players play, to say something, he doesn't even know what. 

There's a few too many pieces of expensive equipment in here for one angry hockey player, he decides, so he stomps out, into the semi-warm San Jose evening. He can see a few people sitting near the palm trees across from their rink, so instead of taking a little walk up Santa Clara street, he just sits in his car and fumes, staring at his hands and wondering. He touches his head, which still feels perfectly fine. He checks the score of the game to find out they lost, 3-1. He stares at the steering wheel for a long time before he picks up his phone. 

 _"Hey Joe,"_ comes Patty's voice, from the other end. If he's done his math right, they should be getting to the plane, maybe still in the process of packing. _"How's the head?"_

"Good, I guess," he answers, trying not to sound disappointed about it. It doesn't work.

He can practically hear Patty's expression on the other end, slow disbelief. _"You guess?"_ There's a pause. _"Why, do you have an update on your……._ " He waits, as his friend struggles for the best way to publicly explain 'concussion hockey god trauma' without disturbing the rest of the team. " _… adventure? You don't sound all that thrilled about it."_  

"Yeah, I guess I do." When he closes his eyes he can still see those shadows playing with the puck two years ago, like it wasn't everything for them, like they weren't just ripping away dreams. "I know it's gonna be late when you get back, but do you mind talking about it?" 

 _"Anything for you, my captain. Should be around midnight, more or less? Do you want me to come to your place?_ " 

"Nah, tell me when you get home and I'll come over." 

 _"Do you want Boyler to come? I mean, if he's interested. He got smashed pretty hard towards the end of the game and might want his beauty rest._ " 

"Yeah, sure, but don't pressure him about it. It's more important that he's healthy." 

 _"Right, of course. Also, sorry about this, but the optional practice tomorrow is mandatory because we played like shit today. So you're probably expected to show up. Don't have some kind of breakdown until then."_  

Joe sighs at that. He stares at the steering wheel some more, which gives him no answers. "Working on, Patty. Working on it."

 _"Okay."_ There's something hopeful there, something strong. Sometimes, Joe thinks Patty more than deserves the C back. _"See you tonight._ " 

He hangs up and stares up at the outside of the Tank for a while. Then, because he has nothing better to do besides drown in his own thoughts, he drives home. He sits on the couch, carefully keeping himself distant because he doesn't want to talk about it. Tabea gives him a concerned look and heads to bed; he turns on the TV and watches ESPN because that'll keep him awake. The last thing he needs or wants right now is to deal with these fantasy-reality hockey spirits that don't give a shit about him one way or the other. The revelation is worse than coming to the conclusion that they might actually exist, all things considered. Knowing there were actual hockey gods would just be another part of the game, like stray elbows and bad ice; dealing with that the hockey gods occasionally were more than interested in sabotaging the dream he'd had since he was four was another story entirely. 

He fights dozing off while Sportcenter drones, and he watches the same Kobe clips eight times, some stupid youtube video of a guy skateboarding into a wall, something about the NFL draft he isn't paying attention to. 

Eventually, the remote slips from his nerveless hand. 

* 

He's angry when he comes to in his gear, angry enough that just looking at the game makes him frustrated. He drops his stick and dumps his helmet where he stands, skating in sharp little circles, trying to figure out what to do. He doesn't want to skate away, but there's no bleachers for him not to play in. What he needs to do is wake up - after all, Patty's supposed to call him sometime soon - but forcing himself out of this dream isn't something he's learned how to do yet. 

For a while no one notices him, and he seethes quietly on the ice, staring up at the sky and out into the endless distance. Trying to imagine Crosby waking up here terrified and skating away as fast as he could, being sicker and sicker and waking up like that, out of hockey for months. He imagines others too, Tarasenko, young and dazed, and David Perron after the hit he laid on the guy last year. Tries to imagine what it might have looked like for Chris Pronger, who hasn't played in years - how much he might have fled, what he might have said to be out for so long and so badly, and Marc Savard. He closes his eyes and swallows back the anger again, shucking his gloves into the pile of gear and running his hands through his hair. It's difficult to concentrate here, like this, trying to waste the time until he knows Patty will call and wake him up. 

"Hey," says one of them, after a while, - Pens Jersey, looking sweaty and exhausted in the token way these guys do, like they're not actually tired. It's like someone put exhausted make-up on them. "Why aren't you playing?" 

Joe thinks about all the things that he should say, maybe something about Pronger or their game, or maybe that it's bullshit that St. Louis scored a goal off Burns falling in front of the net, and worse that they're involved in everything, and maybe even worse that he knows. 

"You made us lose in Vancouver," he says, because that's the first thing that comes to mind. He's angry, and he knows he sounds it, and even without a helmet, gloves or stick he knows that he can be properly threatening. "You screwed everything up. I watched the tape and I saw you give the damn puck to Bieska. I saw it move and you blew on it and it bounced right over to him. We worked fucking hard to win that series and you blew it. I'm trying to win a goddamn cup and I didn't get this far to have some _spirits_ blow it for me." 

They all stop at look and him. Even the goalies, the closer of which skates away from his net and into the corner, looking up the sky away from them. Fleeing from a fight, Joe realizes. Part of him wants to take it back immediately, but most of him knows that apologies are stupid. No one apologizes for anything in hockey. It doesn't mean anything.

"Excuse me?" says Flyers jersey ( _Broad Street Bully_ , Joe thinks to himself) skating close enough that the man (spirit?) can stare up at him, that scowl twisted across his face. He shoves at Joe with his empty hand. "You wanna go? You might be tall but I'll plant your fucking ass on the ice. And you've already got your gloves off." 

Flyers jersey shakes his own gloves off and skates a few inches away, then puts his fists up. Joe raises his own because he doesn't know what to do otherwise. 

"Don't," says a voice behind Flyers jersey, and the brawler looks behind him and lowers his fists. "Fighting isn't always the answer." 

"Suit yourself," the grumbles in response, picks up his gloves and skates away in a sulk. 

It's the player that Joe couldn't put his finger on yesterday. Something about him is fuzzy at the edges, unsettled and shifting, like he's the only one in a tiny little earthquake. No matter how many times Joe looks at the guy he can't figure what he represents. Sometimes the man is wearing garish yellow and purple, or orange, or black and silver, or red, white and blue. The only think he can say for sure is the C, sewn into the jersey Joe can't figure out. It doesn't have a color to it, as senseless as it sounds. The guy just is. 

He puts his hand on Joe's shoulder with a surprising amount of strength given his build, pushing them both away from the crowd. Joe thinks, almost irrationally, that this captain is going to lead him into the nowhere and make his brain into the mash it should be. When he goes to skate away from the touch, the spirit keeps him close. Somehow, the grip is like a vice. 

"We didn't lose that game for you, don't be stupid," says the captain, rolling his eyes. "Sure, we put the puck on Bieska's stick. But we didn't let in all those power play goals. We didn't blow your 5-on-3 chances for you. As a matter of fact, we gave you some of this chances. We didn't let in the soft goals or miss the open nets. We didn't forget how to break out of the neutral zone. You know as well as I do that that goal didn't make your loss in that series. Don't act like you're a rookie to this." 

Joe opens his mouth to say something, but something about the captain's gaze, far off into the distance, stops him. 

The captain looks at him, a disapproving frown on his lips. He takes his helmet off and draws a hand through his hair, then puts the helmet back on. 

"You can be pissed at us all you want, Joe," he says, finally. "You can believe whatever you want about us, about hockey, about anything. But as long we're protecting you, as long as we're with you, as long you've got us in your dome separating you from Chara's elbow, you're going to notice us. Those knuckle pucks won't only be knuckle pucks. Those bad bounces will hit off our skates. Those weird deflections will be from our sticks. So this is where you are. You've always been here, you just never knew it. Everyone is here. Every game you play, we're there. Every loss, every win, every shift, every goal. We're there. You can't hide from us. We don't go away. We go away when hockey goes away." 

Joe opens his mouth to be enraged but all he can do is slump. There's something suffocating about the certainty in the captain's voice. The spirit stares at him for a few moments, reaches for a stick he didn't have two seconds ago, then cross-checks him hard enough to send him sprawling to the ice. With no gloves on, it's worse. 

"This is how a fucking captain acts?" The spirit says, with a scowl. "You learn something you always fucking knew and you just crumble under it like some choking shithead. We owe you that streak but with an attitude like this, maybe you don't deserve it." 

"I don't need your help," Joe says, standing slowly, brushing the ice off his jersey. 

"Maybe----" The captain begins, but when the guy opens his mouth a ringtone comes out, and a second later the only thing left around him is the sound of his phone.


	10. X

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you think it's cheating, that they said I'm due for a streak and if I just get one?" Joe asks Patty, who's studying his beer bottle in a speculative kind of way. "I didn't ask for it. I'm sure I could convince them to take it away, but… who says no to goals?" 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure how Jumbo became the Kirk, Patty became the Spock, and Boyler became the McCoy, but there you have it.

When he blinks he’s back on the couch, and some stupid informercial is on the TV, and his phone is about to vibrate off the table. He reaches forward, still a little dazed, and accepts the call. 

_“We’re here for all your therapy needs,”_ comes Boyle’s voice, a little cheery and a little sarcastic. _”Free beer at Patty’s. Head on over for this limited time offer and we’ll throw in two jet-lagged hockey players.”_

“How can I turn that down?” he manages, finding a surprised chuckle in him somewhere. “I’ll be there soon.” 

Patty lets him in and puts a beer in his hand. Only the small desk lamps are on, and the room is comfortably dark. Boyle is sitting on one side of the couch, his leg elevated onto an ottoman with an icepack wrapped around his calf. He’s holding a second ice pack to his chest, slightly below his shoulder joint on the right side.

“The hell they do to you, Boyler?” he asks, sitting on the other side of the couch and putting his feet up. He throws the defenseman a grin as well.

“Oh, you know, throw pucks at me, sometimes hold me to the locker room wall and kick me till I spit blood, nothing all that unusual,” Boyle replies, chuckling and taking another gulp of his beer. “Well, today I got to watch my protege barely be capable of skating. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love Matty and I think he’s gonna be really great, but he was awful tonight. Awful, awful, awful.” A beat. “What’s the new chapter in the saga of your life?” 

“Well, Zdeno Chara crushed me into the boards, and now some magical hockey spirits are protecting me from having any concussion syndromes, but as a trade-off I’m slowly losing my mind.” He offers a fake-bright grin and takes another drink of his beer, looking over to where Patty’s sat down in a big armchair. 

 “But you’ve made some kind of new discovery on your growing madness?” asks the other forward, with a quirked eyebrow. “Or is it just the fact that you’re losing your mind?” 

“Well,” Joe closes his eyes and tries to mentally backtrack through the last few days. “First of all, there’s the rink, right? In hockey god land. But if you skate away from the rink, it’s like you’re throwing away the protections of the hockey gods. I talked to Crosby, and he said when he woke up there, he skated away, which is why he’s never had this thing go on.” 

Boyle gapes at him. “You mean you actually told Sidney Crosby about this? And he didn’t think you had at least a screw or two loose?”  

“No, I think he thinks I’m crazy. But when I asked him if he’d gone to hockey god land, he said yeah. And then I told him that the next time he goes, he should actually play hockey with them. And then he told me to have a good day in the way that suggested I’m crazy.” 

“Well, if you told me that, I’d think you’re crazy too,” Patty adds, “I mean, the situation is a little nuts.” 

Joe grimaces at him and shifts his chair. For some reason, he thinks about how confused the staff of the Tank is gonna look when they notice a random broken remote for no apparent reason, and the Vancouver game on the TV. “It gets worse. Sid calling me crazy I can handle. But the thing about the hockey gods is that they’re in the game. LIke, those bad bounces and weird caroms off the boards? That’s them screwing with the puck. I saw ghostly hockey players screwing with the puck in the middle of an actual, real game." 

This admission makes both the men look at him with concerned faces. He scowls at them, because he can't think of any other way to defend himself. 

"Maybe Z's hit is causing you to hallucinate all of this," Boyle says, slowly. "I believe that you're seeing all this crazy stuff, Joe, but… seeing hockey ghosts messing with a real hockey game sounds like something that might happen if someone smashed their elbow into your brain." 

"Then why did all my tests come back clean? Twice?" Joe puts his beer down and stands up, pacing in anxious strides across Patty's living room. He stops near the windows, staring out into the dark street, lit only by the streetlights and the moon. He doesn't bother to look back at the other men when he begins to speak again. "Every doctor I spoke to said I had no apparent anything in my head. It was like I never got hit at all. And aside from maybe losing my mind seeing hockey ghosts screw up hockey games, I feel perfectly fine. No headaches, no dizziness, no issues with depth, nothing. I've had hits not qualified as concussions and felt worse." 

"You losing your mind seeing hockey ghosts is a pretty serious symptom, Joe," Boyle retorts, and he can feel the man frowning at his back. He turns back to the other men, both of them frowning at him from their respective positions, "And I don't think it matters what the damn doctors say. You know just as well as we do that not all your issues show up on an MRI or a brain scan, and you know just as well that that's not the only stuff that ruins your game. You know I want you to play more than anyone besides maybe Patty and Coach, but if you're hallucinating, maybe you should sit out and see if it improves. If you freak out on the ice, that could be really bad for you, and I don't mean in the game. You could get sticked or hit with a puck or cut with a skate or something." 

Patty makes a noise of agreement, looks at the floor, and then looks up at him. "Maybe it's showing in a way that a brain scan or something can't pick up. Like he screwed up your neurons or something." 

Joe drops into his chair with a thud and stares at the ground. "I don't know. I just… I can't bring myself to believe that this isn't real. It's not what I would hallucinate if that's what I was doing. I don't know if that actually makes sense, but that's how I feel. Maybe I’m just in denial, but...everything makes too much sense." 

"Well, did the hockey ghosts say or do anything else that leads you to think this?" Patty asks, gently.

Joe sighs. "Well, one thin about them is that they all… I guess they all represent things in hockey. Like, there's one of them who's Sid. I mean, he's not actually Sid, but he plays just like him, and he wears the same gear, and he's got this way about it that reminds me of Sid. And there's another guy who's the Broad Street Bully. I mean, old Flyers stuff, just a nasty guy, wants to take my teeth out. And there's one guy who's the Habs from the 70's. And a goalie who's Marty." 

"Joe," Boyle says, slowly, with an obvious effort not to gape at him. "I think you have a brain injury. I'm not saying that because I, I don't know, because you sound like a crazy person. I just want you to not go out there and hurt yourself badly. If you get distracted by this in the middle of the game you could seriously injured.” 

Patty glares at the defenseman and shakes his head. "Shut up, Boyler, I think he has something else to add." 

"Thanks, Patty." Joe shoots the forward a little smile. "When I first got there, right after Z hit me, they told me I was due for a streak." 

"They can just give you a streak?" Patty says, his head tilted skeptically. 

"Well, if they are some kind of hockey-controlling spirits, there's no reason why not, right?" 

"That's bullshit," Boyle growls, and he's actually angry now, a glare in his dark eyes. He puts the beer down and puts his feet up on the table, crossing his hands across his chest and letting the ice packs fall to the ground. "I can deal with losing, and I can deal with losing on some shitty bounce. But losing because some kind of ghost made it that way? We make our own games. We decide whether we win or lose. And as much as I want to win the Rocket Richard, winning because some ghost made it that way is bullshit. We get out what we put in. Having some magical secret force control it is cheating." Boyle reaches for his beer and take a long swig of it, a sullen look in his eyes. He stares at the bottle for a few seconds, then continues, filling in the silence. "I want you to score all the damn goals in the universe, Joe. You know that. But you have to score them. Some magical force doesn’t just give them to you.” 

"It's not cheating if it he didn't ask for it," Patty replies, quiet but serious. Something in Joe gets kind of strong and proud again, thinking that Patty was maybe always the better captain after all, because he never managed to sound like that, calm but intent all at once. While he tries to roll this thought over, Patty keeps talking. "Sometimes the puck lands on your stick and you don't know how it got there. Sometimes you're the one who gets to get the empty-netter. You didn't ask for that. It happened because  it happened. Sometimes you're due. And I've heard you say yourself that the hockey gods were smiling down on you. So maybe there are actually hockey gods and they were actually smiling down on you." Patty gives the defenseman a skeptical look. "If someone told me they were going to give me a streak, I'd be all over that, and you would too, and don’t lie to me and say otherwise." 

Boyle frowns and sighs at his feet. "I don't know. It doesn't seem fair. And let's say that the hockey gods--" This is punctuated by an eye roll -- "Are the ones protecting Joe from Chara's elbow. That's not fair either. Lots of people get elbowed and miss games. That you don't because you managed not to freak out and run away like Sid is nuts." 

"I don't make the rules, Boyler," Joe says, with a helpless shrug. "But even if they are stopping me from getting a concussion and even if I am about to go on a streak, I'm still losing my mind seeing hockey players that don't exist. So don't think this is all a walk in the park for me.”

"I didn't say that," replies Boyle, frowning. "I didn't say this was your fault or you were cheating or anything. It just doesn't seem fair." 

"You know what isn't fair?" Joe sits back down, next to his frustrated-looking defenseman, and he stares up at Patty's blank TV. "I was watching the game today, or yesterday, whatever - and you know that bullshit goal the Bolts scored off St. Louis falling? That was them. I mean, I saw them in the game, screwing around with the puck. They made the puck go off Marty's shoulder and into the net."

Patty boggles at him. 

"So," Joe continues, before Boyle can open his mouth and begin a new tirade, "I was thinking, what's the weirdest goal that pissed me off the most? Vancouver, Game 5, that Bieska deflection in the finals a few years ago. So I went to the Tank and looked at the video and there they were, making us lose the damn series. And I was asleep and I told them it's bullshit and one of them - the captain, I guess - he basically said that they didn't make us lose. They gave up that goal, yeah, but we put ourselves in that position to be hurt by it." 

"It's still bullshit," Boyle says, eyes still angry. "We control our own games. You're good enough that you don't need some word from above to be the best player on the team, Jumbo. Don't kid yourself into thinking otherwise. And you definitely don't need them to get hot." 

"I don't know, Boyler," Joe replies, and he stares out the window, imagining too easily a game where half the players on the ice don't actually exist - and it's that half that makes the decisions about how the game goes. 

“Sure, I guess," Boyle says, taking two long gulps of his beer to finish it off. He sighs, and Joe can see the resignation in his face. “Anyway, I should get going, I guess. We have to be at practice tomorrow and I'm gonna yell at Matty." 

"Take it easy on the kid," Patty says, a little smile on his lips. "He likes you too much for you to break his heart. Find some forgiveness in that scarred, bruised and grizzled heart of yours.”

Boyle grins back. "There is no love left in this heart, Patty. I am a cold and unforgiving assistant captain, only there to be hit by pucks and pinch on the power play. Don't stay up in your sleepover too late, kids, and keep away from the scary ghost stories. We got school in the morning." 

Both forwards laugh a little at that Boyle collects his ice packs and deposit them back into Patty's freezer. Then, he checks for his keys and his phone, waves and heads out. 

"Do you think it's cheating, that they said I'm due for a streak and if I just get one?" Joe asks Patty, who's studying his beer bottle in a speculative kind of way. "I didn't ask for it. I'm sure I could convince them to take it away, but… who says no to goals?" 

"Joe, I don't know what to tell you," Patty says, looking up from his bottle. "If someone told me they could put me on a scoring streak, I wouldn't ask twice. Especially if there's nothing to lose, you know? If it meant someone got cold or something, I might reconsider, but if it's free goals for Patty night…" The man grins. "Well, that's my favorite day of the year. But I guess I can see how Boyler thinks it's cheating." He takes a drink of his beer, then resettles himself in his chair. "Though, it's not like you're just credited the goals, you know? Let's say that the hockey gods or whatever did give St. Louis that goal. He drove hard to the net, he took plenty of punishment from Burnzie, Stamkos made an amazing shot, the Bolts set up that good cycle… if that was a 'free' goal, then I don't want to see what a goal you have to work for is." 

Joe stares at the ground and chews his lip. “Do you think I’m sick? I feel fine. Not like playoffs fine. Not even like ‘a little under the weather’ fine. I actually feel basically pretty good.” 

Patty sighs and leans back in his chair. He shrugs first, before he says anything, and even then it’s a while before he’s put his thoughts together. “I think you decide if you’re sick. You decide if you’re good to play. Sometimes you say you’re good to play but you know you really aren’t. If you really feel okay to play, then you’re not sick.” 

Joe stares in silence. 

Eventually, Patty stands up. “I’m going to bed. You’re welcome to stay as long as you want, obviously, but if Christina finds you asleep on the couch in the morning, she’s probably gonna think that’s weird.” 

“I’ll go in a few minutes,” he says, and Patty squeezes his shoulder in a consoling manner. 

“Don’t think too much about it, all right? Play hard and you win. Play bad and you lose. Hockey gods or no hockey gods.”  
 “Thanks, man.”

Patty gives his shoulder another encouraging pat and heads up the steps to his bedroom. Joe stares at the darkened street for a long time before he lets himself out.


	11. XI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You really do not want to deal with my not-concussion, Burnzie,” he replies, and he tries not to look too wry about it. Instead he skates in small idle circles, looking at the roof of the rink and then back to the other man. “Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind.” 
> 
> “Well, shit, if I can win the practice Hart, the hell do I need my mind for?” Burns retorts, and Joe shakes his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS! Mirianna made the fic art! It has a cover!! [LOOK AT IT! IT'S PERFECT!](http://darryl-love-zhenya.tumblr.com/post/51440235018/i-was-playing-pond-hockey-he-says-which-in)
> 
> As always, your continued ART OMG, comments, kudos & hits keep me going. <3

When he goes home, he goes to sleep and plays eight periods, each one harder, smoother, quicker and sharper than the last. He doesn’t ask because he doesn’t have the energy for fighting with them right now. He just wants to play, wants to go out there and remember exactly how hockey works, how it looks at its best. How it looks when hockey goes out there and plays hockey.

Joe plays eight periods and when he sits down for his eighth intermission to clean the ice off his skates, he hears a sound from somewhere far off. He knows better now than to start skating away from the rink, but the sound is insistent and familiar and entirely un-hockey, and in this place where everything is hockey, it's like nails on a chalkboard. Imagining what play might be like with that sound ringing off in the distance makes him wince, so he takes a breath to get some courage and skates a little farther from the rink, feeling his skin twitch. He hits a bad edge or divot in the ice and begins to fall on the pond, but when he hits the ice, the ice is his bed and his phone is ringing again. 

He has four missed calls from Patty, one from McLellan and one from Boyle. Not only that, but he should be at the rink right now. Rather, he should have been at the rink 20 minutes ago. 

He growls at nothing, throws on a t-shirt and jeans, and hurries out. When he does manage to show up at practice, though, he feels invigorated. His legs are moving better than ever under him, and his stick feels like an extension of his hands. Even in practice things go well, everything working in tandem. Burns notices first as they shoot shit between drills. 

“Jesus, you’re late for the first time in the universe and look at you. I oughta go out and have Z smash my face in next,” the converted forward says, taking several gulps of gatorade. “You gonna play like this against Vancouver or are you and Nemo having a bet on something?” 

Joe laughs, looking over his shoulder at where the goalie is working. He turns back to Burns and shoots him a grin. “You really do not want to deal with my not-concussion, Burnzie,” he replies, and he tries not to look too wry about it. Instead he skates in small idle circles, looking at the roof of the rink and then back to the other man. “Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind.” 

“Well, shit, if I can win the practice Hart, the hell do I need my mind for?” Burns retorts, and Joe shakes his head. 

"That's right," he replies, carefully cheerful, "All you need is your fat ass to smash into people with."

"Don't deny your love for this ass," Burns says, mock defensive, and he bumps Joe lightly enough that the captain actually laughs. "You only dream about having it."

"You got me, Burnzie," Joe holds up his hands in surrender, and the converted forward laughs too, skating lazily over to the next drill they've been ordered into.

Todd asks about his head a few times - so does everyone else. Ray and the other trainers keep a close and skeptical eye on him, pointing and gesturing and muttering amongst themselves enough to make Joe actively uncomfortable.

"Good dreams last night, Joe?" Boyle asks him, with a knowing look. Joe nods, and Boyle shakes his head. "Any ghosts?"

"Not in practice," Joe replies, because he doesn't see them skating around the boards with the ease of skating since you were born and the confidence you will never be hit. He can imagine almost too easily where they might be though - interjecting themselves into the scrum drill against the boards, messing up the deflections Logan is practicing in front of the net, tipping the puck in the long d-to-d passes Stuart and Hannan are working on.

"Ghosts?" Gomez asks, looking between him and Boyle with a confused glance. He shakes his head, and Boyle skates away to coach Irwin on slapshots.

"Nothing, Gomer," he says, brushing the other man off with a shrug. Gomez gives him a funny look but lets the subject drop.

After practice, they sign things and take pictures with the fans in the bleachers who came to watch. He usually gets some of the most attention but it's even more noticeable today. The fans tell him he's unbreakable and invulnerable and perfect, and a thousand times better than Chara. An older guy even proudly boasts he knew it was the end for Boston when they traded him away. He apologizes when he has to go and disappears into the locker room, putting his head in his hands and wishing more anything he was doing half as good as the fans think he is.

In the locker room, Todd asks carefully about him and wonders aloud if he should undergo another round of testing. Joe frowns at him and escapes to the shower, staring into the white tiles and trying to imagine what it will be like playing in a game where he's surrounded by people that don't actually exist. The extremes seem relatively easy to pinpoint - on one end, him staring, bug-eyed and still in the middle of play, while everyone besides Patty and Boyle wonders what the hell is going on, and he's taken out of the game and put on IR while they they to figure out what's wrong with him. The other end is nicer, him catching every pass and always being where he should be, picking pucks out of midair and catching perfect deflections and shooting at exactly the right time. But something about it still feels a little cheap, despite the imagined sweet sound of the horn. The hockey ghosts in his goals would need hugs just like his real teammates, points and assists like they actually exist.

He comes out of the shower poached like a lobster and wearing a brooding expression. McLellan is waiting for him, his worn frown on his face.

"Joe," Todd says, his hands in his pockets, "I really don't think you're alright. And I don't think you think you're alright either. And don't tell me you're fine because your head doesn't hurt. You know being fine is more than that. You looked good in practice today but you look like something's bouncing around in that head of yours. I've known you long enough to know that look. And I can't even remember the last time you were late." 

"Coach --

McLellan holds up a silencing hand.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want. You don't have to tell Ray. But I think you should consider what you do for the good of the team. If you get dressed and can't play, we all suffer. That's rolling eleven forwards by surprise and it’s a pain in everyone’s ass. So if you don't think you can dress tomorrow, don't. We'll cover for you. But it's important you don't hurt yourself further. None of us can explain why you're not hurt and I think you're responsible enough to know when to play and when not to play.... so if you don't think you can play, don't push yourself."

"Coach, I promise I'm fine," Joe replies, and in that moment he desperately wants to tell McLellan about the hockey rink and the hockey spirits and Habs Jersey and Pens Jersey and skating away and everything else. McLellan waits, like he can see the story writing itself out in his captain's eyes.

Joe doesn’t say anything.

"If you say so," McLellan says, with a resigned sigh. He turns from Joe and walks away, shaking his head.

Joe stands in his towel and marvels at his new ability to disappoint and worry everyone who cares about him. The streak isn't the only gift the hockey gods have given him, apparently.

*

Pollak and Brodie are waiting for him once he gets all his clothes on and into the area of the locker room designated for loitering reporters. They look bored and impatient, and Joe mentally notes them as the next group he's managed to disappoint. This damn streak better be worth it. He puts on his best media smile and walks up to them, waiting. 

"How're you feeling?" Brodie asks, the recording app on his phone on. Joe considers the question before answering. 

"I feel good. Tests came back normal. Felt strong in practice, worked hard. Gonna play tomorrow pending any changes, which I can't imagine would happen." He offers an apologetic little shrug, "Sorry I kept you waiting." 

"How do you feel about the one-game suspension for Chara?" Pollak asks, pen poised over his notepad. "Think it should be more?" 

Joe frowns, and the reporters lean in for what they likely think is going to be a juicy quote. Truth is, the suspension never even crossed his mind. He needs a good opinion for this one, though. It's important for him as a captain. He thinks about it for a few more seconds. 

"I don't make the rules or suspensions," he decides on, while Pollak furiously scrawls on his paper. "I think it was a dirty hit, but what do I know? Easier to judge these things when your head isn't smashing against the glass, right? The head guys in Toronto make those decisions. I just play the game." 

He offers a wry grin. Brodie chuckle quietly, and Pollak offers him a vaguely entertained look. At least he can still think of a good opinionated quote. 

"So, you ready to face Chara in a few days, then?" Brodie, again,  Any plans to get him back?" 

Joe says, "What?" before he covers his mouth and looks down at Brodie's out-thrust iPhone. 

The diminutive reporter closes the phone and offers him a sympathetic grin. Joe finds himself glad Kurz isn't here; the guy's more likely to take shots at him when he doesn't pay attention to other things in his life because he's too busy dealing with hockey spirits. 

"Off the record here, guys. Boston already?" He manages a tired laugh and rubs his hand over his face. "Not shitting me? Lots of stuff going on in my life right now." 

"Not shitting you, Joe," Brodie replies, screwing around with his phone as he talks. "That's why the suspension is a big deal, you know?" 

"Well, he still should have been suspended longer even though I'm fine," Joe replies, frowning. He shakes his head and blinks, gathering his confidence back. "Right, so, on the record. I'm always excited to play Boston. We have a lot of history and I like showing them that I really like my new home. Well, not so new anymore, but San Jose is where I'm staying and I'm interested in beating everyone on our turf…. especially Boston." 

"Noticed you were late today, any reason?" 

"Had some personal stuff to do." It's easy to lie to the press when he thinks of them as the press, rather than his friends, and it isn't really a lie, after all. After all, that's the kind of thing that makes Pollak's blog and the Mercury News type, and he can't imagine the chaos if he started talking about hockey god land and how easy and smooth the hockey is, and it's just hard to pull himself away from it. He notes their frowns and offers an easy smile. "Everything's ok, don't worry. Not a big deal." 

He runs his hands over his face as they watch him. Part of him just wants to go to sleep again. The game is so simple and perfect and easy - no press asking questions or the schedule sneaking up on him or the disapproving frowns of his coach. Just hockey. Period after period. 

"Anything else?" he says, putting his hands in his pockets as to not fidget with them. 

"The two reporters look at each other as if expecting the other to say something. But neither does, so he nods his head in a goodbye kind of nod and says, "See you guys tomorrow." 

"Good luck," Brodie says, and Joe doesn't even bother to acknowledge him, already aching for sharp winter breezes and pure pond ice.

* 

Tabea steps between him and the steps to the bedroom when he gets home, and she crosses her arms across her chest and looks up at him with concerned eyes. 

"Joe," she says, and he's always admired how she can say a lot without really saying anything at all. 

"I'm fine, I promise," he replies, as gentle as he can manage, wrapping his arms around her and kissing the top of her head. 

"You're never late to practice. Ever. Especially because oversleeping?" She frowns at him. 

"It was a one-time thing. I was just having a great dream," he replies with a shrug, because that's the case. "And I just want to take a nap now." 

Tabea plants a kiss on his neck and sighs. Joe holds her close and sighs against her hair, trying not to think about losing his mind. 

"If something was wrong," he continues, in the silence, "You'd be the first to know." It's not technically a lie because he's not sure anything's wrong. 

"Before Patty?" She teases. 

He laughs and hugs her close. "Even before Patty,"  he promises. 

She smiles at him and lets him go, so he takes the steps up to the bedroom and shucks clothes down to his boxers. He's asleep more or less immediately when his head hits the pillow.


	12. XII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Why, is there something else you want to do with your sleep?" 
> 
> Joe isn't sure exactly why he feels so damn uncomfortable when Habs Jersey says that, but he definitely recognizes that subtle drop in his stomach, something in the back of his mind disagreeing without words.

"You're back," he says, to Habs Jersey, as the man-spirit lines up on his wing for a face-off. Habs Jersey winks at him and offers his familiar hockey smile as he sets up, shoving a little into the opposing winger. Joe loses the face-off cleanly and growls, but instead of being frustrated he just pushes the energy into a nasty little forecheck on his opposing center in Rangers red-and-blue. Their goalie - blue and purple with red that seems like blood( _Roy,_ he thinks) - stops the puck, so Habs Jersey skates over to him. 

"My shift," he says, "Don't seem to need to convince you to play now, eh?" 

"It's grown on me," Joe replies with a smile, and Habs Jersey taps his ankle with his wooden stick affectionately. They reset. Joe ties up this face-off and Habs Jersey darts in, taking the puck easy.

"So am I gonna be here every time I close my eyes?" He asks at intermission, pulling off his gear and replacing his underarmor. The things he needs are just there when he reaches for them, an extra stick or a new skate blade or a change in pads. The magic of hockey god land is something else. 

"Probably," Habs Jersey answers, "Why, is there something else you want to do with your sleep?" 

Joe isn't sure exactly why he feels so damn uncomfortable when Habs Jersey says that, but he definitely recognizes that subtle drop in his stomach, something in the back of his mind disagreeing without words. When he tries to work through the answer to the question - because part of him obviously wants to say yes he can't come up with any arguments. He settles into silence instead, putting his gear back on and waiting. The intermissions always end when he's ready to play, never earlier and never later. 

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and skates back onto the rink. 

*

It's dark when he wakes up, dark enough to confuse him, dark enough that shutting his eyes again and just laying in bed seems like a good idea. It’s an even better idea when he factors in that most of his consciousness is still in the game he was playing in his sleep. It was perfect, just like always, and he can still taste the victory a little, can see his rotating teammates pump their fists with joy and skate into his arms for a goal celebration. He's not sure how many points he accumulated in the nap, but it feels like a lot, and for a while just lays in bed with his eyes closed and re-runs plays they flawlessly executed. He thinks about their 2-on-1s and clean breakouts and net-crashing victory. He thinks about the ease of playing from behind the net, how open his teammates always manage to be. He remembers the sharp forecheck with none of the bruises, thinks about the perfect passes and rocket shots, and the cheering of the crowds that, like locker rooms, exists only upon request. 

He makes a mental note to bring some of their better plays to his line's attention, because the hockey gods are probably the best group to model your real-life game on. One of his lines during the nap definitely resembled his real line, one speedy wring and the other more than interested in using the body. 

When he finally decides to return to reality, he opens his eyes and rolls over. The clock says 9:30. 

He's been asleep all day. It's 9:30pm. 

He got a full night's sleep in the middle of the day, and that's on top of the fact that he overslept for practice just this morning. Something twitches wrong in his stomach at the thought, but instead of thinking about it he just sits up in his bed and rubs his face with his hands. He thinks about the endless hockey game that he's only barely tipped a skate blade in. 

"You're ok, Joe," he says to no one, and gets out of bed for real. When he makes his way down to the kitchen, he finds a note there. 

_joe_

_Out to dinner w Pavs + Pattys. Call when you wake up. Worried about you._

_-t_  

He leaves her a text instead, because just the thought of three wives and two teammates all worrying over him at once is nauseating. Then, because it's dark and he's wide awake, he goes out for a drive. What he really wants is to drive down the 1 until he reaches LA - he could probably do it, think about nothing, just stare out into the ocean and down the endless highway. But the scowling teammate faces in the back of his mind are a little too much to bear, so instead he gets on the highway with no plan and tries to quiet his rumbling hockey thoughts of perfect passes and natural ice and a crowd that goes and comes exactly as he desires. 

"You're ok, Joe," he says to the rear view mirror, because maybe that'll at least comfort the guy who looks back at him. 

He doesn't think it's working, if the familiar frown he sees is any indication. 

He drives until it's light out, groaning as he sits in the beginning of what will be the mess of rush hour morning traffic. He parks and still feels wide awake, staring at the darkened dashboard of the car and trying to psyche himself up. Despite how alert he feels, a part of him is still suggesting he sleep, catch a few hours of shut-eye between now and practice, and then a nap between practice and the game. He takes a deep breath and staunchly ignores those thoughts, then steps out of the car and into the house. 

Tabea is sitting on their couch with a cup of coffee. She looks up at him and frowns.

"You've been sleeping a lot," she says, and comes over to him. 

He shrugs. "Just tired, I guess." 

"Patty said you were having strange dreams." 

Joe nods, and quietly shoves his anger at his fellow forward to the side. That's for later, and this is for now. "They're kind of nice, I guess. I just dream about playing hockey." He grins a little, like it's harmless. "It's fun. I'm not dying gruesomely or something. I just play, and really well. There's intermission and stuff too. And a crowd, sometimes." 

She sighs at him and stares at his feet. "I'm worried you're not okay. You don't sleep this much. And you said you would tell me if something's wrong."

"I'm fine," he says, and he can't help but be exasperated. He's still wide awake, and the looming game is starting to make him excited, wiping anyway any vestiges of sleep that might've been creeping up on him. "How about if I look like a mess at the game today, I'll get re-checked out? Is that fair?"

"I guess," she says, but she doesn't meet his eyes as she slowly takes the stairs to the bedroom.

He sits down in front of the TV and turns it on, staring hazily at the morning news and trying not to think about this mess too much. He tries to concentrates on the upcoming game at hand, and for some reason he finds it’s impossible to push a winking Habs Jersey out of the corner of his thoughts.

* 

"You told my wife about my dreams?" He says to Patty at practice, as the other forward is strapping on his shinguards in the stall next to him. 

"I figured you told her, as she's you wife," Patty retorts, though he appears to be more interested in speaking to his ankle than his captain. He clips on the shinguard and then works on the other. "It's a little weird that you didn't, you know. I mean, it's kind of a big deal, I think. Pavs knows too. Tabea pressed me pretty hard at dinner." He sits up, both shinguards on, and gives Joe a helpless frown. "I didn't go into detail, I just said you were having strange dreams." 

"Thanks," Joe replies, and he knows he sounds irritated and sharp. He stomps off, feeling the other man’s frown in the back of his skull. 

Luckily, it's pretty easy to ignore Patty at practice - and Pavs, and Boyler - especially because he has new plays rattling around in his head that he has to teach to Burns and Galiardi. They soak it up like sponges, Brent waggling impressed eyebrows at him and TJ asking questions, like what if they lose the face-off, and what if he misses the puck, and so on. 

McLellan studies them for a while, Joe notices. He's more than familiar with the feeling of the coach's eyes on him, and something about the sense is so heavy that he wants to turn around and snap. _Out with it_ , he'd like to say, sharp and angry. _Tell me you don't think I'm fine. Tell me you think I’m broken. Tell me you think I'm concussed._

"Earth to Jumbo," TJ says, tapping the older man's ankles with his stick. "Can we practice this a few more times from the face-off? Not sure I'm ready to go in a game yet. And you're going to pull this off in a game against the 'Nucks in eight hours?" 

"Why not?" Burns says, and saves him from answering. The converted forward appears at his side with a silence that's strange for a man his size. "I mean, it's not all that complicated. But between the three of us, it should be fine. We're all grown ups, right?" He winks at Galiardi, who scowls at him. "Let's try it a few more times and then in skate before the game. If you still can't handle it, maybe we can bump Raffi up to the line." 

Galiardi huffs at him and stands a little taller on his skates. "I got it," he snaps. "I just don't want to cause a turnover." 

"Okay, okay, enough," Joe skates between them, shooting Burns a disappointed look. Brent rolls his eyes before skating away, and Joe shakes his head and tries shrug off the headache growing in his temples. A nap could probably do him well. That would take care of this thudding in his head, just a few more periods of pretend hockey --- 

Right then something clicks, and he stares at the boards in horror. 

"Joe?" says Burns, from somewhere, a gentle note of concern in his voice. 

"Yeah, I'll be fine," he mumbles, and that one is such a bad lie that he finds himself surprised Brent doesn't literally drag him off the ice and into the trainer's room. 

Instead, the converted forward offers him an unconvinced look and skates away. 

"Let's try the drill again," says TJ from behind both of them, and passes him a puck with a flick of his stick. 

All of a sudden Joe doesn't think the play's that great anymore, but goes anyway, because that's what you do when you're fine.

And he’s fine.


	13. XIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'm done," Joe replies, and he pushes his shoulders back and offers his angry frown in response. "I'm done coming here. I want to go home." 
> 
> "And do what?" 

They're in the middle of a game when he appears on the pond in this magical universe, which is probably a first. Usually they're just ready to absorb him into it, but now he has to wait, so he watches for a while. He admires the prefect transitions and smooth breakouts and effortless cycle. They crash the net with an enviable fearlessness that Joe jealous even despite his anger at the whole situation .

The longer he watches, the anger he gets. He can't say why, and maybe he's just jealous - maybe there are worst thing than to go to bed to play hockey and never wake up. He wonders what being a hockey spirit might be like. Do hockey spirits ever get tired? Do they want something else? Do they switch styles? 

But these things, Joe realizes maybe for the first time, are not actually humans. They might look it, but they're not, and the prospect of becoming one of these things makes him suddenly sick. He'd be as amazing as they all are, sure. And then he'd spend that talent tipping the pucks for teams that weren't his. He wouldn't even have a damn team, he realizes. He couldn't complete those plays, only help them along. And no one would be swallowing him up in a goalie celebration hug, and none of those cheers would be for him. 

Something angry and sharp clenches in his stomach. 

"Hey!" he says to Pens Jersey, as the man rushes up the center with Habs Jersey on his wing. Pens Jersey is matched up against the captain, and it's more even than Joe would have thought. They all ignore him, though, concentrating on the game. 

"Hey!" he shouts, louder this time, and he hops over the boards that weren't previously there. All of a sudden he knows who's on his team, how they're doing, the strategy they're using, what the goalie is like. He knows how long the period has to go and who's winning and how everyone looks. Entering the game is like being plugged into the internet all at once, and there's this high that makes Joe suck in a breath and grin with the joy of it. 

He forces himself to push that to the back of his head and charges for Habs Jersey on the opposing team, lifting his stick and giving the spirit a firm shove across the chest with it. 

"We need to talk," Joe says, with a growl in his voice. Habs Jersey frowns at him and spits french curses. 

He hears a whistle, and suddenly he's in the penalty box with no understanding of how he got there. 

"This isn't about the game!" he shouts, fighting down what might be nausea, because the universe more or less reached down like a crane and dropped him right here. He stands up and take a step to the front of the box, reaching for the handle that opens the door. 

There's nothing there. 

When he looks down to find the latch, all he sees is a smooth wall. 

The box has no way in and no way out, four walls sealing him in. He's not a claustrophobic guy, but something twists painfully in his stomach. He's unable to leave here, and he sits down and closes his eyes and fights the panic. 

"This isn't a joke!" He yells at the game, furious because it covers the icy sense of terror, "Let me out! I'm done." 

"Two damn minutes, Thornton!" one of the opposing players shout as he skates past the box. 

"Yeah, and don't be such a vicious, sloppy asshole next time!" Flyers Jersey - his teammate - adds, tapping the outside of the box as he sets up on the point. 

"I don't want to play!" 

The defenseman who's taken Flyers Jersey's spot in the cycle spares him a single skeptical look. 

A minute and a half of ignored shouting later (and penalty killed), the door opens like it was always there. Joe hears the pleased roar of a crowd that doesn't exist and steps onto the ice. Habs Jersey lines up in a good formation with him, and then Joe stops and lets play blow by him. The goalie makes a great save on the 3-on-2 opportunity this presents, and holds the puck. 

"The fuck are you doing, Thornton?" Flyers Jersey demands as he lines up on Joe's wing. "You look like dogshit."

"I need to talk to one of you," Joe replies, and he doesn't bend over for the face-off, just stands there and stares at Pens Jersey across from him. 

"Put your stick down, Joe," Pens Jersey says to the face-off dot. 

"Not until we talk.” 

He blinks and he's in the penalty box again, and the part of him tuned into the action on the ice says delay of game. Where the mechanism should be to open the box door is still smooth and unblemished. He runs a hand over his face and sighs. 

"Fuck you, Thornton!" Flyers Jersey roars, "I'll kick your ass, I don't even care if you're my teammate or not." 

He sits in the box and counts the seconds. 

He takes three more penalties refusing to play before intermission, and when the buzzer goes off, Flyers Jersey skates over and shoves him to the ground. 

"Fuck you! Fucking play!” He shouts, “You get to come here and you mount this fucking rebellion against your own team!" 

For a second, Joe has the terrifying thought that Flyers Jersey is about to stomp a skate on him, but Habs Jersey steps between them. 

"Take it easy," Habs Jersey says, and Joe stands behind him. 

"You're making us lose to fucking Pittsburgh," Flyers Jersey spits with rage. "Fuck that shithead and his pretty face and his whole damn team." 

A hulking d-man grabs Flyers Jersey's arm and tugs at him. 

Habs Jersey turns from his fellow spirit to Joe with a scowl. "What are you doing, Joe?" His voice is cool and angry, "You're ruining the game." 

"I'm done," Joe replies, and he pushes his shoulders back and offers his angry frown in response. "I'm done coming here. I want to go home." 

"And do what?" 

"Stop sleeping so much. See my kid. Spend time with my wife. Eat dinner with my friends. Stop making everyone worry." 

Habs Jersey frowns at him. Then, oddly enough, confusion works it's way across the spirit's face. "But this is hockey. Who cares?" 

"Look, I'm not you," Joe continues, and he has to take a deep breath because the conversation is not only absurd on several levels, but also already frustrating.  He touches his glove to the old HC that adorns the old style jersey he's become familiar with. "You… you don't have anything else. You're not alive. You don't… have a team, or fans, or a family. You aren't anything. You don't have coach, or press you have to keep up with. I have a life, I guess. There's other things in my universe besides hockey." 

The frown on Habs Jersey's face deepens. "The stuff doesn't matter." 

"Yeah, it does." He takes a deep breath. "Look, I can't go to sleep and _not wake up_. I can't become…. one of you. And if that means I have to deal with being elbowed in the face, then that's something I have to deal with." 

Habs Jersey shifts on his skate for a while, then looks up at hime. "There's nothing more important than the game," he says, and there's a tonelessness in his voice that suggests endless repetition. He doesn't know any better, Joe finds himself thinking, and all of a sudden the anger evaporates into sadness. Meanwhile, the spirit is still talking. "But if you don't want to play, then you know how to leave." He looks off into the distance of the pond. 

Joe follows his gaze and remembers all the pains creeping up on him, louder and louder and eventually screaming at every bone at his body, like waking up the day after the playoffs and you’ve just been eliminated and it’s all over. 

* 

The alarms wake him, thankfully. He puts on his suit and kisses his wife and drives to the rink. The adrenaline of the game pumps into his body, the excitement of playing, and Vancouver at that. And something about the fact that he's owed a streak - and maybe he won't get it, but that's fine - makes it better. He can't stop the grin from creeping across his face as he parks. And it helps him not think about the hockey gods either, thinking about how they might show up on the ice during game time. 

"How're you feeling?" Boyle asks during their warm-up skate, "You gonna see 'em when we play?" 

"Think so," he replies, as they skate in lazy circles, "I'll tell you either way, though." 

"Just try not to freak out on the ice, all right?" The defensemen grins, but the cheer is wiped out on his face pretty quickly. "Burns and Gali don't know, right?" 

"No, but I think Burnzie thinks I'm a few screws short of a house. Pavs knows I'm having weird dreams. Besides Patty and you, that's it." 

Boyle nods. "Well, if you have a panic attack, skate towards the bench. We need to get you off the ice for someone who can actually play as soon as possible. Or if you can't, just remember to cover your man and panic at the same time."

Joe shoves at him, and Boyle laughs. 

"You're the worst, Boyler," he says, as the other man skates away. 

Boyle looks over his shoulder. "Cold and heartless, remember?" he says, as he skates away. 

Joe shakes his head and looks for Patty. When he finds the other man (practicing his slapshots from the point), he skates over. "Sorry about being a dick to you yesterday." 

Patty shrugs. "Feeling better?”

Joe nods. 

“Do you think you're going to see them during the game? Try not to look like you're tracking hockey players that don't exist." He passes Joe one of the pucks, who shoots it off Greiss' pads. 

"I think so. Just hope I don't freak out." 

"You and me both." Patty gives him a pat on the shoulder. "Just try to take it easy, I guess." 

"Thanks," Joe says with a grimace, and skates off. He lets himself relax into the sounds of the meager crowd for their early skate and the feeling of ice under him. When he looks at his team, they're all in teal, with familiar faces and names. That means something, his men, and it makes him smile. 

Burns and Galiardi call him over, and he practices some plays with them. 

McLellan gives them a good talk before the game proper, talking about being sharp through the neutral zone and not trying to do so much, and he puts extra emphasis on not letting them crash the net (Niemi, in the corner of his eye, nods approvingly). Joe nods at everything and mentally tells himself he's fine and this game will be fine. He rubs his hands over his face and focuses on the plays his coach is running through, trying to put his own thoughts out of his head. He has a game to play. He's fine.

The roaring of the crowd as they go through the tunnel and sprint through the shark head makes him smile and forget everything. He lets his heart pound to the clapping and the cheering and the familiar entrance music. Logan and Patty's line is starting, and it buoys him to listen to the fans cheer for his friends. Boyle and Irwin are starting at D, and Niemi (who Joe suspects the loudest cheers are for) is in net. 

So he stands for the anthem and resists the urge to smile as the fans roar that Vancouver sucks and then he goes to the bench. McLellan puts a hand on his shoulder and leans down to his ear. 

"You ready?" he asks. 

That's a tricky question, so instead of giving a full answer, he says, "As ready as I'll ever be." 

McLellan pats him on the shoulder and strides down the bench. His yelling, like the screaming of the crowd and the furious boos for the Canucks, is soothing. 

When the puck is dropped, the ghosts appear out of nowhere and no one but him seems realize there’s now double the amount of hockey players on the ice that should be. 

Vlasic eyes him in a curious way when he gasps. 

"I"m fine," he murmurs, and he takes a deep breath to calm his nerves.

Imagining playing amongst his team, an opposing team, and two more sets of invisible hockey players is one thing. But psyching oneself up to actually do it in about forty seconds is a completely different ballgame.


	14. XIV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hockey gods hold his opponents back from reaching their positions without them even noticing, and they tip and bobble the puck like it’s their plaything.

They're faster than the two real teams, Joe notices when the game starts. They're faster and they move with an effortlessness he's come to be familiar with, like the ice is perfect. It's like he's dreaming - playing one of those sleep-hockey games - but this is a real game, with real implications, and it's all at once a terrifying and exciting thought. Even stranger, they pass through his teammates and the Canucks and the refs like they're not even there. LIke ghosts, he thinks, and some part of his mind says _duh, that's what they are_. They tip the puck between passes and lean a little on this player and that, sliding his teammates up and down the ice without them noticing. They scrape ditches and divots in the ice that people trip over, that the puck hits and misdirects. 

McLellan's whistle is sharp over his head, and the coach shouts his name first, then Burns and Galiardi. He meets Patty's eyes as the man comes off and he prepares to hop over the boards. He can tell his friend is trying to encourage him, trying to help him as much as he can in public. He takes a breath and pushes into the game. 

One of the Sedins is right on top of him, and Habs Jersey is next to them, and Joe has to force himself to concentrate on Burns' pass and pay attention to nothing else, not the ghost sliding on the ice and the unsettling smoothness of it's motions or the cursing Canuck behind him. He catches the puck on his stick and shoves the Sedin off, entering the Vancouver zone. He stick-handles around the other Sedin and flicks the puck into the corner, then goes to the net.

Pens Jersey is in the corner before the puck gets there, tipping it off the boards and onto Galiardi's stick. TJ takes a second to be surprised at the bad bounce ("bad," Joe has to think, biting back the snort) before the younger forward flicks it back to the point where Irwin is waiting. Joe gives the Sedin defending him a good shove and takes the puck back, then slides it to Burns in the slot. Burns takes a shot that bounces off Luongo's pads. It's a good shot and a good save, and Joe takes a breath and fights with Galiardi for the puck that's rumbled into the corner. Kesler and Bieska are right on top of them. 

"Like we practiced!" He shouts, and Galiardi nods, exiting the mess in the corner as the puck trickles out onto Burns' stick. The big man passes it to Vlasic, who doesn't wait before passing it back to Thornton. 

Joe almost hears Pens Jersey laughing, probably because he recognizes the play, and then the imaginary hockey player skates into action to help them out. 

They tic-tac-toe it effortlessly into the net, and Burns laughs and swallows them into a hug, the crowds cheering. 

Behind him, Joe watches Habs Jersey wink and skate away, waiting for the next play. 

_Thanks_ , Joe wants to say, but the gratitude lodges oddly in his throat. 

More or less, that's how the game goes. Joe tries not to stare too hard at the imaginary hockey players flying around and through their game. The refs never see them, and never notice their blatant interference or sometimes the way they snap at the real players and each other. He tries not to yell too obviously at the rest of his teammates, because it seems strange that they're not exactly where they should be - a little to the left, or at the point, or crashing the net. 

He actually does scream at Logan to drop back at one point, and the center obeys, then looks surprised as the puck bounces right onto his stick. Everything was set up for that. 

So Joe scores two goals in the first and feels like he could probably score six if he really tried, if he took every opportunity and every opening available. Mostly, the urge to pass is too strong to overcome, even when his teammates - those that wear teal sweaters and don't - are telling him to shoot. (The hockey gods also help him out by not making him do an intermission interview, a dubious honor that's stuck with Galiardi today.) 

"I guess you are fine," McLellan says to him when he sits down and yanks off some of his sweaty gear. That just makes Joe laugh, and he offers a smile. 

"I told you so," he says. The coach rolls his eyes and clears his throat, and then he launches into a speech about backchecking and keeping up pressure in the defensive end and not making Niemi do all the work, with a hefty side of yelling at them to clear the damn puck and explaining how being up 3-1 in the first means they better not get lazy. 

"If we can get Jumbo a hatty, that'd be nice," he adds at the end, to whoops and cheers by the players. 

Joe waves dismissively at his teammates, but he can't stop smiling, either. He starts the second more comfortable with the hockey gods and his teammates, and the game has never seemed to easy and so simple. He just goes where he needs to be, and the puck finds him, skirting around Vancouver players. They seem to be slow and disjointed and disorganized, and he dekes around them without thinking, passes around them like they don’t exist. 

For a while, he just enjoys it, the ease of the game. He probably could score about ten goals, he thinks, because the Canucks are suddenly so slow, and his teammates are well-organized and he can throw the puck anywhere and it ends up on their sticks. The hockey gods hold his opponents back from reaching their positions without them even noticing, and they tip and bobble the puck like it’s their plaything, and Joe catches every second of it, can feel them move in the back of his mind, like how he knows when time runs out when they play in hockey god land. 

That’s what this is like - playing in his dreams, only the hits hurt, and he understands the chirps for the most part, devoid of their 1920’s slang, and his opponents are all wearing sweaters he’s familiar with. But the pace of the game, and how it feels to play - the sensation of understanding everything on a whole different level - is just as he remembers it. It's breathtaking, terrifying and relaxing all at once, that real hockey could feel like this.

Patty’s line gets a goal, a dirty mess of a play in front of the net, the puck twisting out of Luongo’s glove at the last second and onto Logan’s stick, who flips it up into the net. It’s the only goal that he doesn’t see any of the hockey spirits involved in, and something about it makes him cheer a little more. Vancouver gets one back a little later, a monster slapshot that goes straight in before he can blink. That quiets the rink a little, and, well, the period is coming to a close, and the last thing Joe wants to do is leave any of the fans wondering about the result of the game. 

Maybe he’s feeling a little cocky about the situation, but he decides he’d like the hat trick in this period rather than the third, so he waits a shift or two and then decides to score. And he does, easy as breathing, a tip-in from a killer of a slapshot from Boyle. Boyle laughs as they come together to celebrate, and the twinkle in his eyes says he wants to say something that he’s holding back. 

The roar of the crowd sounds much better now. 

They cut to commercial when the ice keepers come out to collect the hats, so the team skates back to the bench and congratulates him. It does feel pretty great to be this in control, to understand the game so well, to almost instinctively know where to go and how quickly to go there - but there’s definitely a part of him, twisting low in his stomach like nausea and saying _you’re cheating._ It’s not really cheating, most of him retorts, as he takes all the helmet bumps and high-fives and stick taps. 

He can quit anytime he wants to, he thinks, and swallows the laugh. 

Galiardi’s leaning on the bench on one side of him, and Burns on the other with a hand slung over his waist and giving him a few proud linemate-type pats. The converted defenseman shifts his stick from one hand to the other and shakes his head, wearing a mystified expression. 

“When did you become Gretzky?” he asks, almost laughing, because Joe has played more or less like god - or rather, like a team of hockey spirits is whispering in his ear - “You’re fucking telepathic with the puck today. Feel I could spin around until I was dizzy and pass the puck to nowhere and you’d still be there.” 

“We all have our games, I guess,” Joe replies, and Burns rolls his eyes and gives him a pat on the rear. 

“Think you can spare some of that luck for us mere human beings?” 

Joe laughs a little and shakes his head, becuase all he wants to say is _you have no idea._ Instead he offers a casual shrug and says, “Sorry, it was delivered with my name on it. No can do.” 

“What an asshole,” Burns replies, mock-offended, and he skates away. 

Boyle fills the space where Burns was, and he leans against the bench in a way that hides Joe from whoever is sitting behind the older defenseman. With as much privacy as they can manage, Boyle shoots him a knowing kind of look. 

“Try tapping his ass, that’s probably where he keeps the goals,” Burns says over his shoulder. 

Boyle looks at him, snorts with laughter and waves a dismissive glove. “I don’t know if I’m willing to touch Jumbo’s ass to improve my game.” 

“Well,” Burns replies, scoffing, “I can see how much heart you have, then.” 

“Go harrass someone else,” Boyle retorts, and he winkles his nose in disdain, “Captain’s meeting.” 

“You only have an A, asshole.” 

“Shut up, both of you,” Joe growls at them, and Burns squares his shoulders in a quietly insulted manner. “That Boyler isn’t interested in harassing me says nothing about his will to play.” 

Burns turns over to talk to McLellan, so Joe looks back to Boyle, who is frowning at him, more seriously this time. 

“I know you said you were going on a streak,” Boyle starts, in a low voice, “But this...” 

Joe tries not to smile. “Yeah. I bet I could score thirty goals today if I wanted. Four is enough, I think.” 

Boyle manages a snort of laughter. “Oh, is that it? Well, I think I’ll decide to score four goals too.” 

Joe looks over his shoulder at the ice crew and tries to judge how long they have until they’re playing again. Not long, he thinks. It’s good, because talking about his newfound ‘talent’ is making him antsy. He forces a grin. “Don’t be silly. D-men don’t score goals.” 

Boyle hits him a little harder, and Joe laughs. He’s about to open his mouth to say something else, but McLellan whistles sharply and they fall into line around him.

“Joe, you’re back out there with Gali and Burns. Boyle, get out there with Matty. Just because Joe’s a goal-scoring god right now doesn’t mean the rest of you can slack off. You got that?” 

“Yes, coach,” Burns says, like McLellan is his dad, and the coach gives him a sharp glare. 

“Burnzie, do not think I won’t bag skate you until you vomit just because you’re a +3 tonight.” 

A few of the players snicker, but Joe ignores any extra chirping and skates out to center ice. Henrik is already staring at the faceoff dot, so Joe bends over and puts his stick down, noting the location of the spirit of the captain lingering near Galiardi, and Flyers Jersey eying up Burns like he’s not sure whether to approve or punch the guy in the back of the head without him ever knowing about it. 

They blow Vancouver out 7-2, and he has a six point night, and in his first-star interview he has to wait about five minutes for the fans to stop screaming so he can answer Brodie’s questions. He tells Brodie that he felt good, that he had his finger on the pulse of his game, that he had a good sense for the rest of his teammates. 

When Brodie asks him what he’s going to to for celebration, he says, “You know, I’m getting kind of old, and I think I might turn in early.”


	15. XV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We're coming back to your place with you," Patty says after a moment, and Joe gives in, because he’s known Patty way too long to not know that there is no way he’s going to manage to go home alone when his friend uses a tone like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, your continued kudos & comments are appreciated. They keep me going. :)

Joe has about eighty interviews to do now, which is the only downside of scoring four goals in a game. That doesn't count the on-ice one, the only one he actually enjoys -something about the screaming fans, most likely. When he gets back to his locker, Brodie and Pollak and Kurz and everyone else is waiting for him, looking vaguely impatient in the way reporters do. No one looks impatient the way reporters manage to do it, not even his wife. 

He answers their questions and tells them how good he feels. He tells them how well he was working with his line. He tells them that he had a really good feel for the game today. He says nothing about any of the other hockey players on the ice, the ones that weren't really there - Habs Jersey's pleased smile as Joe batted the puck out of the air off some crazy pass or the way the captain guided him to the perfect position to pick up rebounds from Luongo's pads. He really could have had thirty goals that game, he thinks, and he even says so. 

The reporters all laugh, because they think it’s a joke.  

"Sometimes everything just works, you know?" he says, into one particular microphone shoved into his face, "Sometimes you think you can just do whatever you want out there and it'll work. And those games aren't all that common, but they're pretty fun when they come around." 

When he is mercifully done with interviews, he takes a long shower and definitely feels excited about his dream-hockey game tonight. There's things he wants to talk over with the hockey spirits, about their strategies during the game, how they came up with the plays they more-or-less forced Vancouver to run to slow them down, or maybe how they decide to work the Sharks for their advantage. Many of the guys have already left by now, not being held back by interviews and/or their own wandering thoughts. 

Maybe he won't get dragged off to the bar, he thinks, daring to hope that his team has all disappeared off to whatever their plans are. 

His hopes are promptly dashed when Boyle appears out of the shadows of the hallway, and Patty next to him. 

"You think we were just going to let you sleep for another thirteen hours?" Patty asks, a little grin on his face. 

Boyle clucks his tongue and shakes his head. "You're coming to the bar, whether you like it or not. Or we can bother you at your house if you want." 

"Guys," Joe says, and he holds up his hands in surrender, walking towards the garage with his two assistant captains in tow, "I know that this thing is weird, but I really just want to go to sleep right now. I'll be fine, and come to optional practice tomorrow, and then we're going to kill Boston. Please don't make me go out tonight." 

Patty and Boyle look at each other like they're trying to figure out the next step. 

"We're coming back to your place with you," Patty says after a moment, and Joe gives in, because he’s known Patty way too long to not know that there is no way he’s going to manage to go home alone when his friend uses a tone like that. 

*

He pulls the beers from his fridge and gives one to each of the men seated on his furniture, then takes one for himself. Both his As watch him expectantly for a minute before he sits down on the other end of the couch from Boyle and opens his mouth.

"I could have scored 30 goals in that game if I wanted, and I'm not kidding about that. I saw them - the hockey gods, I mean - on the ice, when we were playing. They would settle around us during faceoffs and everything. There's one - he's like the broad street bully, I guess - and the faces he was making at Burnzie, shit. And they would kind of subtly move people? And you don't notice."

"They weren't doing this to us, right?" Patty asks, his face creasing in a frown. "Only Vancouver?"

"No, it was everyone. I mean, it wasn't like they made every play - Patty, that dirty goal you and Cooch got was all yours. But Boyler, remember on that power play we were on and you just managed to keep it in towards the end? In the second? You were drifting over. That was them."

Boyle frowns and take a drink of his beer.

"This doesn't get less crazy, Joe," the defenseman says. "And I like it less now that I didn't just watch you score four goals. Not that I'm complaining that we won or you're awesome, really, that isn't it." Boyle sighs, and he rubs a hand across the back of his neck in an anxious kind of way. "It just rubs me the wrong way. Even if we only have the illusion of control over our game, isn't that better than nothing? And Joe, you being able to score 30 goals isn't....."

He just trails off, scratching three days of a beard and staring at the ground.

Joe yawns and takes a drink of his beer. "I know. And I know that it….that it's not right. That, okay, I didn't ask for this and it's basically the result of Chara smashing my head in, but…." He manages a laugh, a pathetic-sounding thing, and can't help the smile. Just thinking about the way the game was flowing around him gives him this aftertaste of that rush. "The way I felt out there, I can't explain it. Everyone seemed so slow and predictable. I knew exactly what was going to happen on every play. I knew how the puck was going to come off Lu's pads, I knew how the Nucks were going to cycle, I knew where Gali was going to go before he went there. It was like I was a god of hockey."

Patty and Boyle both stare at him. 

"I think you've lost it, Joe," Patty says, after a couple moments.

"I know I sound crazy," Joe replies, and both the other guys laugh, with the same hint of disbelief. "But it felt amazing." 

"I'm sure it did," Boyle replies, leaning back on his side of the couch, "And you're losing your mind, and you're kind of cheating. The most supernatural cheating I've ever heard of, and it's not like you're going to piss hockey psychic powers into a cup and get suspended, but that's not the point." 

Patty sighs at his lap and looks up. "Cheating or not, you do realize that you've more or less done nothing besides sleep and play hockey for the past few days, right? It's really great that you're not concussed, but I don't think you're all right. And I don't know how to cure you. I don't even think you know how to cure you, Joe. I don’t even know if you’re getting worse or if you’re going to pass out on the ice or something. Scoring goals is great. But if this hockey god thing is real and all of this is actually happening, that means you’re playing with some weird supernatural force no one understands. I just don’t want you to get hurt. More hurt.” The winger fidgets slightly in his seat, playing with the mouth of the beer bottle and taking a swig of it. 

Joe looks at Patty, taking in his concerned face. “I don’t think I’m going to pass out on the ice or something, but.....” He sighs. “I don’t know the answer. When I get out there during the game, I feel invincible. I feel like Gretzky. I feel better than Gretzky. I don’t feel like I’m getting sick or something. I don’t feel like this is going to come back to haunt me. I know it’s cheating. Game’s too easy for it to not cheating. But...”

"But?" Patty prompts. Joe smiles at him, and it's a real smile this time. 

"I think cheating to kick the sorry shit out of Boston is more than worth a few extra hours of sleep." 

Patty bursts out laughing at that, and even Boyle grins. Only the forward goes back far enough to know about his long, sordid history with the Bruins, and the trade that turned him into a Shark. It was a much younger Patty Marleau that listened to him opine at great drunken lengths on the Bruins organization, after all. 

"Well, I can't deny you that," Patty says, and he finishes his beer and stands up. "I'm going to head out and go to sleep. We have skate before the game and I don't know about you guys, but I told Todd I would go to help him out with some play he wants to practice." 

Boyle stands up with a heavy sigh and puts his half-drank beer on a nearby end-table. "Just don't do anything stupid, okay, Joe?" 

"What, me do something stupid?" Joe retorts, and Boyle just offers a frustrated sigh. 

"Yeah, you do something stupid, like get drunk on power and go to sleep and not wake up or something crazy." 

Joe forces a smile because Boyle always manages to be painfully accurate with these kinds of things. 

"Get out of my house," he says, half-jokingly, and he closes the door behind both of them. He changes into pajama and drops into his bed, thinking about what he should say. The plans are quickly interrupted by him dropping off into sleep. 


	16. XVI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No,” Joe replies, shaking his head, “I mean, I’m not coming back.” 
> 
> Pens Jersey frowns. “I don’t understand.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short chapter. We're almost done, I promise! Holy mackerel.

He appears there during an intermission. He takes a deep breath of the winter-crisp air, feels it hard and sharp in his lungs. He wonders if real pond hockey actually tastes like this and he forgot, or somehow, like in everything else so far, this place is different. He skates in a few long laps around the rink, staring down at his skates as he crosses them effortlessly in turns. There’s something relaxing about going in circles, over and over, regardless of the tug he can feel to actually join the game. 

“Penny for your thoughts?” asks the voice of the captain, and Joe looks up at the hockey spirit, vaguely frowning. 

“You’re not playing?” he asks, because play is beginning to resume and the captain is here, in his jersey of oddly shifting colors, never really anything at once. “I didn’t know you could not play. The guy in the Canadiens jersey made it sound like he didn’t know anything else but playing.” 

“Ah, _Les Habitants_ ,” says the captain, with something vaguely resembling amusement. “That’s a different kind of spirit than I am. That represents a team. I represent a person. So people, of course, can not play hockey sometimes, if we so desire, though that’s.... pretty exceptionally rare. We understand that there are things, at least, outside the rink. Less important things, but things nonetheless. Teams, of course, don’t know anything but hockey. There’s no such thing as the Oilers or the Kings or the Rangers outside of an ice rink.” 

Joe frowns. 

“I don’t understand,” he says. 

“Of course you don’t,” replies the captain, patting him on the shoulder with a glove in a sympathetic kind of way. Joe waits for some kind of explanation, but there’s none. Instead, the captain skates in circles with him, matching his speed with the utter effortlessness he’s come to expect from everyone here. Eventually, he speaks. “I heard you wanted to leave. I was hoping we could help you break the record for consecutive hat tricks.” 

A chuckle. “There are other things in my life besides hockey. More important things, I guess. Maybe you don’t get that those things exist, but they do for me.” Joe stares down at the shark on his jersey, then up again at the captain. “I’m cheating. What I have right now - it’s not fair. Not by a longshot. I know being fair isn’t a part of the game, not really, but.... this is more than I’m willing to have without feeling guilty. The game’s too easy. I know everything. More importantly, I can't go to sleep and not wake up, and I think one day that might happen if I keep ending up here. 

The captain makes a thoughtful noise at that. “I guess you can’t. You know how to leave.” He looks out into the distance of the pond. 

“I know,” Joe replies. “But I’m not going yet. I have one last game to play with this on my side, and then I guess I’ll lay sick in bed for a while. I just wish there was a way to make it less obvious. I don’t want to just collapse on the ice after my time’s up. I’ve had enough of that.” 

“We could make it less obvious,” the captain says. “I mean, you could get hit at the end of the game if you wanted. Not too hard, probably, but hard enough for everyone to think they know and be wrong.” 

“You can do that?” Joe asks. The captain just laughs and shakes his head. 

“Joe, I can do anything in hockey.” He pulls a puck from nowhere and flicks it onto the blade of his stick with a practiced ease, tossing it up into the air and catching it on the other side. “That’s probably the best way to think about it. But first I want to play with you. I like doing that. It’s been a while since we had someone as creative and original as you. We can all only do what know. We don’t learn. We aren’t people.” 

“All right.” Joe smiles, and they skate onto the rink proper together, and suddenly the game is all around them. 

He doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of the ebb and flow of the hockey spirit game, and he knows some part of him is definitely going to miss it. Everything about it - not only the skill of his teammates and opponents, but the perfect smoothness of the ice, however it never gets battered and pitted, and the way all the penalties are always called exactly how they should be, and the hits (as vicious as they are) never really hurt all that much. There’s never any lingering soreness or aches or pains. No one ever gets elbowed in the face by accident. No one ever takes a hit to the head and goes down in a heap. No one ever hits the boards awkwardly and crumbles. 

He plays four periods, and then at the end of the fourth, he studies the locker room and walks over to where Pens Jersey and Habs Jersey are talking out some play. 

“Hey,” he says to both of them, “I’m leaving.” 

Habs Jersey frowns at him. Pens Jersey just shrugs. “Sure. See you next shift.” 

“No,” Joe replies, shaking his head, “I mean, I’m not coming back.” 

Pens Jersey frowns. “I don’t understand.” 

Joe frowns and turns to walk away, shaking his head. 

“By the way,” Pens Jersey says to his back, “if you’re skipping a shift, don’t tell orange asshole over there, because he’s about as bright as a bag of rocks and he’ll kick your ass for it.” 

“Noted,” Joe replies, and laughs despite himself. Then, he steels himself and turns around, where the captain is standing, studying him with this expression he doesn't understand. "I'm going home now," he says, more firmly than he feels. 

“Good morning,” the captain says, and presses a finger of his glove to Joe’s forehead. 

* 

 

He wakes up, kisses Tabea on the forehead, and makes breakfast for both of them. 

“You weren’t late to practice today,” she teases. 

“I’m feeling better,” he replies, and he’s struck by this feeling that he hasn’t actually seen his wife in days. It’s not like they’ve been on a roadtrip. It’s like she’s been there and he’s just seen right through her. He takes a deep breath and smiles at her, and when he stands up, she does too. 

“You win today, or else,” she says, and leans into him. There’s something amazing about the hug that playing hockey doesn’t replicate. 

“I promise,” he says, and she just laughs and walks away, and he’s stuck staring for a while at her back, the slim profile of her shoulders, the mess of blonde hair. Something like pity pings in him, because no one who plays perfect imaginary hockey has a perfect wife, and yeah, he does. 

He shows up for practice, but he doesn’t really do any of the drills, just talks about lines and strategy with McLellan, and yells at the younger kids for not practicing hard enough. Patty is there, working on some new plays with the third and fourth lines, playing opposing forward for most of practice. Boyle shows up and works on some drills with Braun and Irwin. 

“Cheating today?” Boyle asks him towards the end, as McLellan studies the younger players with his hands crossed and a frown etched across his face. 

“It’s not cheating,” Joe retorts, but Boyle scowls at him hard enough that Joe decides not to fight anymore. “Anyway, just this game. Then I’m going to be all messed up and you’ll miss me.” 

“Probably,” Boyle replies, and adds a chuckle at the end. “How many goals are you going to score?” 

“I think I’ll just settle for the hattie.” 

Boyle laughs a little more this time, enough that McLellan looks over his shoulder at them with his disapproving face. 

“Sorry, coach,” says the defenseman, and Joe gives him a pat on the shoulder. 

“Quit slacking, Boyler,” teases Patty, skating up to the two of them. Boyle huffs and skates away, and Patty looks at Joe. 

“You’re going to see them this game, right?” Patty asks, and Joe nods. “Well, good luck.” 

“Thanks,” Joe says, but he offers a wry smile at the end, “But I don’t think I’ll need it.”


	17. XVII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krejci grows steadily more apoplectic with every puck Joe takes from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to David Krejci, who probably isn't a complete jerk.

David Krejci sneers at him in the faceoff circle. Joe just grins back, and he wins the faceoff easily, because everyone is so desperately slow. He relishes in it, mostly because he knows it’s going away soon. Even though the ease of the game does itch at his conscience a little ( _cheating_ , Boyle’s voice is saying in his head), there’s no denying how amazing it feels. 

Even more so, the fans have realized how good he is, and they scream every time he gets the puck and every time he comes off the ice. There’s something heady about it, something he’s familiar with after all these years of playing. There’s nothing like 17,562 screaming their approval to get one’s blood rushing, and that applies on top of the thrill of actually playing. 

“How’s your head?” Bergeron says to him, shoving at him sharply in the corner of their own zone. He can feel Niemi’s presence clinging to the goalpost, and Burns right next to him shoving his stick through Joe’s stakes to dislodge the puck, and Boyle back at the blueline somewhere. 

“Better than yours,” Joe replies in a pant, and his eyes flick over Bergeron’s shoulder, where the captain has skated over and jabs the puck out of the mess they’ve put it in. It bounces over to Galiardi like it was aimed that way.

Bergeron snorts at him and skates after Galiardi, and Joe seeks out Krejci waiting in the slot. The Czech offers him that sneer again, and Joe gives him a little shove, less than an interference penalty but enough to express his unkind opinions about the other forward. 

“You lost, and you’re on a losing team,” Krejci says to him, and Joe looks over for a second while Burns more or less throws Seguin to the ground with the hand not controlling his stick. “Not sure why you bother.” 

Joe feels that familiar rage build in him, that one that he cultivates exclusively for hockey, exclusively for being chirped about his team that he probably sees more than his family. He’s not an angry guy, more or less, but it’s easy to feel the rage boil when someone speaks ill of his friends - the friends who didn’t laugh at him when he told them he had found some kind of hockey Mount Olympus. The friends who give him not-too-terrible advice sometimes, when things are rough. The friends who aren’t afraid to tell him if he’s a cheater. 

Yeah, Krejci’s good at hitting the rage nail on the head. He growls at the other man, who just offers him an unfriendly smile. He takes stock of the refs in the first second second, the hockey gods in the second - Flyers Jersey leaning on Bergeron and Habs Jersey sliding up close to Seguin to lift his stick - and in the third, crosschecks Krejci across the spoked B in his chest hard enough that the man’s dazed when he hits the ice. 

No whistle. 

The sneer transforms into a look of unadulterated rage, and Krejci shouts at him in Czech and then screams at the nearest ref. Joe distantly hears McLellan’s sharp whistle, and he skates back to the bench. 

“At least I’m a loser you have to look up to!,” He shouts at Krejci, who’s also moving back to his bench for a line change. Even if Krejci doesn’t turn and face him, he can tell he was heard from the way Krejci goes rigid as he sits down. 

Burns is laughing an exhausted laugh to his side, and in between him and the Boston bench is Burish, giving him an enabling kind of smile. Flyers Jersey skates past their bench, stops to help Logan control a bouncing puck, and says to Joe, “You should show it to people like that asshole Krejci more often.” 

Joe smiles at him, then leans behind Burish and screams at the Boston bench. “Maybe if Chara wasn’t such a weakling that would have knocked me out more than one game!” 

He’s cheating, and it’s cheating, and of course he’s going to be out more than one game after this one, but none of that takes away from the satisfaction of the whole Boston bench turning towards him and looking downright furious at the slight to their captain. 

“You shithead,” Boyle says as he appears on the bench near him, because he knows - but all they can both do is laugh. 

Joe assists on Havlat’s goal that’s a direct result from an awful change from Boston, and he follows Pens Jersey until he’s standing in just the right place to have a puck bounce off his shinpad and go through Rask’s five-hole. 

The Boston bench shouts at him louder, insulting his family and his team, and he blows a kiss to Krejci when they meet at center ice for the face-off. 

“You’re a lucky ass,” Krejci snarls at him. 

“Better to be lucky than good,” Joe replies with a wink, and wins the face-off. 

He doesn’t take the greatest advantage of the hockey gods that he could (he still knows he could score 30 goals if he tried), but that doesn’t change the amazing satisfaction he can get from skating circles around the Boston lines. Not just Krejci’s line (Krejci grows steadily more apoplectic with every puck Joe takes from him), but around the defense too, like Chara’s range is nothing and Seidenberg’s a six year old. There’s the joy of scoring goals, of course, and the joy of scoring them against Boston, but there’s something to be said for that feeling of ultimate superiority that effortlessly and utterly outskating your opponent brings. And maybe his opponent is being held back a little, what with Flyers Jersey surreptitiously leaving his stick out for the Bruins to trip on chips on the ice (read: his stick blade), or Pens Jersey with a backcheck that makes skates and sticks unsteady, or the captain gently moving any Boston player left or right, or pushing them into the offensive zone to make the play offsides. 

But none of that changes how good it feels be obviously, completely better. 

He dekes around Chara with ease, avoiding his stick like it’s not even there, and snaps an as-you-please wrister over Rask’s left shoulder for his second goal of the game. 

By the time the first period ends, he’s practically flying, and the screams of the fans lift him even higher.


	18. XVIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a whistle, and shouts Joe can’t make out - they seem blurry when he tries to listen to them - and an overwhelming chorus of boos. 
> 
> “Well, this was fun,” the captain says, standing over him, and his voice is unsettlingly sharp and clear against the garbled background yells of his teammates.

The fans scream louder when they skate out for the second period, and Burns nudges him at a high point of the yells. Joe forces himself not to look at the jumbotron, because while it might be poor form to do so while you’re just in the middle of streak, it’s even worse to do it while the streak is assisted by hockey spirits. Logan’s line with Patty starts the period off, and Joe takes the few seconds to study the Bruins’ shaken-up lines. He scowls at Krejci - now with new linemates - who seems to have redirected his Thornton-related rage onto his Patty. Flyers Jersey whistles at Joe as he skates past and cocks his head towards Krejci, a curious expression on his face. 

Joe nods as little as he can, and Flyers Jersey laughs, his eyes gleaming. Watching the spirit make his enemy’s skating look like shit is entertaining if nothing else. 

McLellan throws him, Burns and Galiardi on the ice, and Julien sends out a new set of forwards along with his top D pair of Chara and Seidenberg. The latter seems to ignore Joe completely, which likely has something to do with the way the spirit captain is shadowing him - but the former easily passes Boyle and skates right towards Joe. Joe finds himself more tense than he thought he might be, and Chara strips him of the puck while he’s recalling being smashed into the boards. The thought of the world going black momentarily stills him, and the Slovak skates off without looking back.

“Thornton! Head on straight!” McLellan snaps from the bench, though Joe can detect the worried note in the admonishment right away. He growls at himself, because playing distracted is no way to be (hockey gods or no hockey gods), and skates after the play. 

“Little PSTD flash there?” Seguin shouts up at him, the kid wearing a smug little smile. Joe looks left and right, and then plants the center solidly onto the ice, maybe a little harder than necessary.

Boston gets a goal a little later. It’s born out of a messy scrum in front of Niemi’s net, and it’s difficult for the goaltender and Braun to defend against four black-and-yellow hockey players, buzzing like hornets and jabbing until the puck squirts in. Braun and Stuart are looking murderous as the Bruins celebrate in the loud chorus of boos. 

“You don’t fucking mess with the goalie,” Flyers Jersey says into his ear, low and angry. He resists the urge to look back at the spirit and instead only gives a small nod of agreement. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you out a little bit with these assholes.” 

“Don’t be too obvious about it,” the captain says, from somewhere on his other side. 

When play resumes, the Bruins are disjointed and disorganized, and part of him can practically hear Randy and Drew talking about how amazing it is that Boston’s lost all their momentum after immediately scoring. Joe watches with intent eyes as the rest of his team skates and can’t help but smile at the assistance. His Sharks just look so _good_ , connecting passes and keeping offensive pressure that correlates directly with how loud the building is. They stay in the Bruins’ zone for long periods of time, and each time the cheering reaches this fever pitch, fans saying _come on you have to score, come on you have to score, come on you have to score_ in their special way. 

Joe obliges, dodging around a Nathan Horton pokecheck and putting the puck right on Burns’ stick, who taps it in like this isn’t one of the toughest teams in the NHL. 

The evolution of nervous cheers from offensive prayers to the screams of a scored goal is one of Joe’s favorite things. 

He thinks about getting another, maybe two, because hell if he’s only got this for one day, he’s going to take advantage of it. 

He decides not to wait, either, and even though Logan loses the faceoff at center ice, the Bruins don’t convert on the opportunity. Joe smiles at the sheer havoc that Torres causes, almost laughs at the way Desjardins can hound the Bruins until they’re livid with rage. Then he throws himself onto the ice, catches a puck from Boyle, and bounces it into the net off Rask’s skate. 

The hats are just as good the second time, maybe better. 

The Sharks score three more goals in the period, though Joe doesn’t get points in any of them. It doesn’t matter though, because when he looks over and sees the slumped shoulders of the Boston bench, that’s more than enough reward. 

He hopes the Bruins front office is watching. 

_See how good_ Patrice Bergeron _is leading your stupid team. Look at all his amazing leadership qualities and how well he carries everyone_ , he thinks, maybe a little bitterly. 

The third period contains mostly downright embarrassing play from Boston, a whole lot of Claude Julien screaming his head off, and two more goals from his team, one from him. 

It’s basically a laugher at this point, and Joe’s spending most of the last ten minutes or so on the bench, watching the third and fourth lines go out there and skate their hearts out. They force themselves to play with intensity in a game where it’s pretty obvious most of the players have stopped working their hardest. Joe knows he should yell at Pavelski when he sees the other man slack off in the corner, but he knows the feeling too. He asks McLellan if he can play a shift or two with Patty, which is always nice, and the coach obligingly throws them on the ice together. 

Sometimes playing with Patty on his wing is having his own little hockey spirit on his shoulder. He’s always had better chemistry with the other man than most. The captain clears his throat approvingly to his side, like he can read Joe’s mind. Skating with Patty is easy and a nice change of pace from the game where they’re not really trying. He has a few trick plays he wants to attempt to see if Patty can figure them out on the first try. His guess on the result is always yes. 

He’s more or less practicing with Patty with about two minutes to go in the game when Krejci’s line (Bergeron and Seguin reunited with him), get put on the ice against them. The Bruins all look furious, like the feeling of utter defeat has worn off and left them raw (Joe knows that feeling) and both Krejci and Seguin steam towards him. He’s got the puck, and he considers the no-look pass, but instead he glances over his shoulder to get a handle on his linemates. When he looks up, his whole vision is yellow and black, and the collision plants him solidly on the ice. 

There’s a whistle, and shouts Joe can’t make out - they seem blurry when he tries to listen to them - and an overwhelming chorus of boos. 

“Well, this was fun,” the captain says, standing over him, and his voice is unsettlingly sharp and clear against the garbled background yells of his teammates. “Thanks for letting us in. In the meantime, get well soon.” 

“What?” he manages, half-stunned, but suddenly the captain is gone. 

“Joe?” Boyle says, suddenly at his side, getting an arm under his and helping him to his feet. His friend’s voice is rumbling over a ringing in his ears, and everything seems a little too loud for him. He squeezes his eyes closed once and twice to get everythign to settle back to normal, but nothing does. And then there’s standing up, which is harder than it should be, suddenly, compacted by the pounding headache that seems to have swept in in the wake of the disappearance of the captain. When Joe looks around, in a way that must look a little dazed, he realizes all of hockey spirits are gone. 

So this is it, he thinks. That was the hit. 

He didn’t even it see it coming. 

“Ow,” he replies, much later than a regular person in a regular conversation should. Boyle chuckles despite the concern in his dark eyes. 

“Don’t see them anymore?” Boyle asks, and Joe nods a little. Even that makes his head throb worse. It’s nice that the defenseman is keeping him steady as they glide towards the bench, where Ray is glaring and McLellan is screaming at the refs. Joe isn’t sure he’d be able to make it on his own without staggering.

Predictably, he fails the concussion tests for several hours before being told he’s being put on IR. Patty volunteers to drive him home, and Boyle tags along. 

“So they’re gone?” Patty asks as he drives. Joe nods in the front seat and leans against the window, his eyes closed. 

“I just can’t wait to go to sleep and not dream of anything,” he murmurs. “I thought I might go to sleep and not wake up. This sucks, but I need it. I’ll get better from this, and then I’ll get better at the game.” 

“Well, looking at it that way,” Boyle says, lounging in the back “‘Ow’ is an improvement over ‘I was playing pond hockey.’” 

Patty glares into the rearview mirror, but Joe just laughs. 

“Yeah,” Joe says, and the headache feels like abates a little, and maybe soon everything will be just the way it should be. “I guess it is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow. it’s done? it’s really done. wow. o__O 
> 
> first of all, thanks for reading, kudos-ing, commenting, keeping me going. it means a lot to know people are reading, and they like it. that powers me along. sorry the last few chapters have taken so long to polish off - i had some real life stuff that was getting seriously in the way of writing. but i’m glad to announce that this is finished, and i really enjoyed this universe. Don’t know what it says about me when the whole point of the story is that one of my favorite players ever gets a concussion. 
> 
> Apologies for my general fictional inaccuracies, some of which I twisted to make this story work. I don’t know the concussion protocol in detail for the NHL, nor have I ever had a concussion. And double-sorry for my terrible description of hockey games in progress. Action is hard. I don’t actually think Chara, Bergeron or Krejci are complete dicks and I apologize for characterizing them (especially Krejci) like that. If you never thought about it, Flyers Jersey represents the Broad Street Bullies, Pens Jersey represents Crosby, Habs Jersey is the dominant Habs teams of the 70‘s and the captain is Gretzky. Brodeur and Roy are both featured. I thought about putting Sawchuk in, but he never made it. 
> 
> thanks for reading & hope you enjoyed reading as much as i enjoyed writing. if you would like to further chat with me about this fic or anything else in the universe, please feel free to hit me up at @picklesnake. until then, go sharks!


End file.
